Browsing by Subject "Parenting"
- Results Per Page
- Sort Options
Item Open Access Cohort Succession, Intergenerational Transmission, and the Decline of Religion in the United States(2019) Brauer, Simon GeorgeScholars over the past several decades have noted the resilience of religion in the United States (Chaves 2011; Gorski and Altınordu 2008; Hadden 1987:601–2; Presser and Chaves 2007), but many recognize that the youngest US cohorts are significantly lower on several religious characteristics than older cohorts (Hout and Fischer 2014; Putnam and Campbell 2012; Voas and Chaves 2016). Scholars have proposed several explanations for this trend, disagreeing about whether it is the result of a particular cultural moment or an ongoing process leading to even greater religious decline. Replicating Voas’ (2009) model of slow, predictable decline across cohorts, I find that, surprisingly, the US closely fits the same trajectory of religious decline as European countries, suggesting a shared demographic process as opposed to idiosyncratic change. Family dynamics are an important part of this story. Family characteristics are some of the most significant predictors of religious outcomes (Hoge, Petrillo, and Smith 1982; Smith and Denton 2005; Uecker and Ellison 2012), but only a few studies have examined how aggregate religious decline is shaped by family processes (Chaves 1991; Crockett and Voas 2006; Kelley and De Graaf 1997). Even fewer have done so using self-reported data from members of several generations of the same families (Bengtson et al. 2018; Bengtson, Putney, and Harris 2013; Smith and Denton 2005). I advance this line of research by decomposing within-family, inter-generational religious decline into components that can be attributed to factors within the family and those that cannot. Whereas the combination of individual and family characteristics explains the decline in religious service attendance within families, it does not explain much of the decline in self-rated religiosity, suggesting that the intergenerational transmission of religious behavior operates differently than the intergenerational transmission of internal sense of religiosity. I consider these findings in light of theory and research by developmental psychologists and sociologists of the family on what leads children to adopt (or not) their parents’ values, attitudes, and practices.
Item Open Access Growing Up in the Face of Economic Hardship: The Effects of Job Loss, Material Deprivation, and Subjective Financial Stress on Children and Parents(2018) Schenck-Fontaine, AnikaMost research on the effects of economic hardship on children and parents has only considered the effects of income poverty, while ignoring the roles of two other dimensions of economic hardship - subjective financial stress and material deprivation. In this dissertation, I fill that gap in the literature by examining the effects of these underexamined dimensions of economic hardship on children's social-emotional outcomes from an international perspective. I also expand on the extant literature by examining the effects of economic hardship on parenting at the community, rather than the family, level. Together, the three chapters of this dissertation add a more nuanced and global perspective to a growing body of literature on the multiple dimensions of economic hardship and their impacts on children and parents.
The first chapter examines the multiple possible manifestations of economic hardship at the family level and their associations with children's social-emotional outcomes. Using data from the Millennium Cohort Study, a nationally representative longitudinal study of children born between 2000 and 2001 in the United Kingdom, I find that half of the families who experienced economic hardship were not income poor, but nevertheless experienced material deprivation, subjective financial stress, or both. Moreover, all manifestations of economic hardship, including those without income poverty, were associated with higher levels of behavior problems for children. I interpret these findings to indicate that income poverty is a necessary but insufficient measure of economic hardship and that future research on the effects of economic hardship should consider all of the possible manifestations of economic hardship.
The second chapter more deeply investigates the association between material deprivation and children's social-emotional outcomes holding income constant. I use data from the Parenting Across Cultures Project to identify whether the association between material deprivation and children's behavior problems found in the first paper is also observable among families in nine diverse countries in Europe, North and South America, Africa, and Asia. I find that even when income remained stable, parents' perceived material deprivation was associated with children's externalizing behavior problems. I also find that parents' disciplinary practices explain a small but significant share of the association between parents' perceived material deprivation and children's behavior problems. There were no differences in these associations between mothers and fathers or between high- and low- and middle-income countries. These results provide further evidence that material deprivation influences children's social-emotional outcomes at any income level and suggest that this association is significant in diverse political, cultural, and economic contexts.
The third chapter examines the effect of economic hardship on parenting behavior at the community, rather than family, level. Using longitudinal state-level US administrative data on mass layoffs and child maltreatment investigations, this chapter tests whether economic shocks at the state level are associated with community-wide increases in child maltreatment. I show that job losses are associated with a significant increase in investigations for physical abuse, but not in the overall rate of investigations. Moreover, job losses also predict an increase in the share of reports that was substantiated. These findings underscore the need to consider economic hardship at the community level in addition to the family level when studying economic disparities in children's outcomes and experiences.
Item Open Access Implementation and randomized controlled trial evaluation of universal postnatal nurse home visiting.(Am J Public Health, 2014-02) Dodge, KA; Goodman, WB; Murphy, RA; O’Donnell, K; Sato, J; Guptill, SOBJECTIVES: We evaluated whether a brief, universal, postnatal nurse home-visiting intervention can be implemented with high penetration and fidelity, prevent emergency health care services, and promote positive parenting by infant age 6 months. METHODS: Durham Connects is a manualized 4- to 7-session program to assess family needs and connect parents with community resources to improve infant health and well-being. All 4777 resident births in Durham, North Carolina, between July 1, 2009, and December 31, 2010, were randomly assigned to intervention and control conditions. A random, representative subset of 549 families received blinded interviews for impact evaluation. RESULTS: Of all families, 80% initiated participation; adherence was 84%. Hospital records indicated that Durham Connects infants had 59% fewer infant emergency medical care episodes than did control infants. Durham Connects mothers reported fewer infant emergency care episodes and more community connections, more positive parenting behaviors, participation in higher quality out-of-home child care, and lower rates of anxiety than control mothers. Blinded observers reported higher quality home environments for Durham Connects than for control families. CONCLUSIONS: A brief universal home-visiting program implemented with high penetration and fidelity can lower costly emergency medical care and improve family outcomes.Item Open Access Linking Parenting Styles to Parent and Child Behaviors in a Joint Task(2019-04) Kohler, CeliaThis study explored: 1) the link between parenting questionnaire data and parenting behaviors in a parent-child play task, with the aim of creating a short behavioral task to more sensitively empirically measure parenting; 2) how parenting measures relate to child behaviors, including child helping and compliance/noncompliance; and 3) how different contexts, namely the presence or absence of time pressure during a joint task, affect parent-child relationships. Thirty-five 3- to 4.5-year-old children and one of their parents participated in four behavioral tasks, and questionnaire data were collected for each parent-child dyad. Authoritative parenting style scores were related to increases in the amount of commands and praise used during the behavioral tasks, as well as a decrease in the number of questions used. Authoritarian parenting style scores were related to an increase in the amount of negative feedback used. Permissive parenting style scores were not significantly related to any parenting behaviors. No parent measures were found to be significantly related to child behaviors, possibly due to the child measures not being sensitive enough. When comparing how parents and children behaved under time pressure, parents used less praise, less questions, more commands, and more negative feedback, whereas children complied significantly less on average under pressure. Findings suggest that the dyadic relationship is affected by the context in which it is found, and that using behavioral measures leads to a more robust understanding of individual parenting practices and effects. Future directions and improvements to the current study are discussed.Item Open Access Maximizing the return on investment in Early Childhood Home Visiting through enhanced eligibility screening.(Child abuse & neglect, 2021-12) Dodge, Kenneth A; Benjamin Goodman, W; Bai, Yu; Murphy, Robert A; O'Donnell, KarenBackground
The MIECHV (Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting) program invests substantial federal resources to prevent child maltreatment and emergency medical costs. Eligibility is based on screening of demographic or clinical risk factors, but because screening accuracy in predicting poor outcomes is unknown, assignment to home-visiting might miss high-risk families or waste resources on low-risk families.Objectives
To guide eligibility decisions, this study tested accuracy of demographic and clinical screening in predicting child maltreatment and emergency medical care.Participants and setting
A population-representative sample of 201 birthing mothers (39.8% Black, 33.8% Latina) in Durham, NC, was enrolled between July 2009, and December 2010, and followed through December 2015.Methods
Participants were screened demographically (i.e., Medicaid, first-born, teenage, no high school diploma) and clinically (i.e., health/health care, parenting readiness, home safety, and parent mental health) at birth and followed through age 60 months, when Child Protective Services and hospital records were reviewed. Cox hazard models tested accuracy of prediction from screening variables.Results
Demographic factors did not significantly predict outcomes, except having Medicaid/uninsured predicted more emergency medical care and being first-born was a (surprising) protective factor against a child maltreatment investigation. In contrast, clinical factors strongly predicted both maltreatment investigations (Hazard Ratio = 4.01 [95% CI = 1.97, 8.15], sensitivity = 0.70, specificity = 0.64, accuracy = 0.65) and emergency medical care (Hazard Ratio = 2.14 [95% CI = 1.03, 2.14], sensitivity = 0.50, specificity = 0.69, accuracy = 0.58).Conclusions
Even with added costs for clinical screening, selecting families for home visiting based on assessed clinical risk will improve accuracy and may yield a higher return on investment. The authors recommend a universal system of screening and care to support birthing families.Item Open Access Normative Range Parenting and the Developing Brain: Investigating the Functional and Structural Neural Correlates of Parenting in the Absence of Trauma(2022) Farber, MadelineResearch on extreme deviations in early life caregiving has provided valuable insight into the effects of early adversity on brain development and risk for psychopathology. However, much remains unknown about the impact of normative range variation in parenting on these same processes. The primary aim of this dissertation is to begin to address this gap in the literature.
I first examined associations between variability in family functioning and threat-related amygdala reactivity. Analyses revealed that greater familial affective responsiveness was associated with increased amygdala reactivity to explicit, interpersonal threat. Moreover, this association was moderated by the experience of recent stressful life events such that higher affective responsiveness was associated with higher amygdala reactivity in adolescents reporting low but not high stress. I hypothesized that these paradoxical associations may suggest a mechanism through which parental overprotection manifests as psychosocial dysfunction. Centering this hypothesis as the focus of my next study, I examined more detailed aspects of both early caregiving experiences and corticolimbic circuitry. Analyses revealed that participants who reported higher maternal control exhibited increased amygdala reactivity to explicit, interpersonal threat and decreased structural integrity of the uncinate fasciculus. While not a direct replication, these findings supported my hypotheses regarding parental overprotection and expanded Study 1 findings into structural connectivity between the amygdala and regulatory regions of the prefrontal cortex.
I next conducted a scoping review of the extant literature centered on the question, “Is variability in normative range parenting associated with variability in brain structure and function?” This review yielded 23 records for qualitative review and revealed not only how few studies have explored associations between brain development and normative range parenting, but also how little methodological consistency exists across published studies. In light of these limitations, I proposed recommendations for future research on normative range parenting and brain development and highlighted a path forward. Lastly, I applied these recommendations to my own empirical analyses. In the same sample of young adults used in Study 2, I examined associations among parental care and control, neural structural phenotypes, and mood and anxiety symptoms. Analyses revealed no significant associations among parenting and structural indices of interest, suggesting that neural structure is robust to more subtle variability in parenting even while neural function is not.
This dissertation provides critical first steps in empirically investigating how normative parenting shapes brain development with the data currently available. Further, it highlights the work of others similarly investigating this question and establishes an agenda for advancing future research on this topic.
Item Open Access Predicting Adolescent Mental Health Outcomes Across Cultures: A Machine Learning Approach.(Journal of youth and adolescence, 2023-04) Rothenberg, W Andrew; Bizzego, Andrea; Esposito, Gianluca; Lansford, Jennifer E; Al-Hassan, Suha M; Bacchini, Dario; Bornstein, Marc H; Chang, Lei; Deater-Deckard, Kirby; Di Giunta, Laura; Dodge, Kenneth A; Gurdal, Sevtap; Liu, Qin; Long, Qian; Oburu, Paul; Pastorelli, Concetta; Skinner, Ann T; Sorbring, Emma; Tapanya, Sombat; Steinberg, Laurence; Tirado, Liliana Maria Uribe; Yotanyamaneewong, Saengduean; Alampay, Liane PeñaAdolescent mental health problems are rising rapidly around the world. To combat this rise, clinicians and policymakers need to know which risk factors matter most in predicting poor adolescent mental health. Theory-driven research has identified numerous risk factors that predict adolescent mental health problems but has difficulty distilling and replicating these findings. Data-driven machine learning methods can distill risk factors and replicate findings but have difficulty interpreting findings because these methods are atheoretical. This study demonstrates how data- and theory-driven methods can be integrated to identify the most important preadolescent risk factors in predicting adolescent mental health. Machine learning models examined which of 79 variables assessed at age 10 were the most important predictors of adolescent mental health at ages 13 and 17. These models were examined in a sample of 1176 families with adolescents from nine nations. Machine learning models accurately classified 78% of adolescents who were above-median in age 13 internalizing behavior, 77.3% who were above-median in age 13 externalizing behavior, 73.2% who were above-median in age 17 externalizing behavior, and 60.6% who were above-median in age 17 internalizing behavior. Age 10 measures of youth externalizing and internalizing behavior were the most important predictors of age 13 and 17 externalizing/internalizing behavior, followed by family context variables, parenting behaviors, individual child characteristics, and finally neighborhood and cultural variables. The combination of theoretical and machine-learning models strengthens both approaches and accurately predicts which adolescents demonstrate above average mental health difficulties in approximately 7 of 10 adolescents 3-7 years after the data used in machine learning models were collected.Item Open Access Public goods and procreation.(Monash Bioeth Rev, 2014-09) Anomaly, JonathanProcreation is the ultimate public goods problem. Each new child affects the welfare of many other people, and some (but not all) children produce uncompensated value that future people will enjoy. This essay addresses challenges that arise if we think of procreation and parenting as public goods. These include whether individual choices are likely to lead to a socially desirable outcome, and whether changes in laws, social norms, or access to genetic engineering and embryo selection might improve the aggregate outcome of our reproductive choices.Item Open Access Putting together phylogenetic and ontogenetic perspectives on empathy.(Dev Cogn Neurosci, 2012-01) Decety, Jean; Svetlova, MargaritaThe ontogeny of human empathy is better understood with reference to the evolutionary history of the social brain. Empathy has deep evolutionary, biochemical, and neurological underpinnings. Even the most advanced forms of empathy in humans are built on more basic forms and remain connected to core mechanisms associated with affective communication, social attachment, and parental care. In this paper, we argue that it is essential to consider empathy within a neurodevelopmental framework that recognizes both the continuities and changes in socioemotional understanding from infancy to adulthood. We bring together neuroevolutionary and developmental perspectives on the information processing and neural mechanisms underlying empathy and caring, and show that they are grounded in multiple interacting systems and processes. Moreover, empathy in humans is assisted by other abstract and domain-general high-level cognitive abilities such as executive functions, mentalizing and language, as well as the ability to differentiate another's mental states from one's own, which expand the range of behaviors that can be driven by empathy.Item Open Access Spanking Isn’t Necessary: Key Influences on Parental Decision Making about Corporal Punishment(2020-05-04) Lee, OliviaFifty years of research has revealed significant harms from the use of corporal punishment. Despite this, corporal punishment remains a cultural norm in the United States. Previous research has revealed the importance of parental attitudes and sources of advice, but little research asks parents directly about their discipline decisions. This study finds that parents use corporal punishment when they believe that 1) Spanking is sometimes necessary and 2) It is okay to slap an arm or a face instead of spanking and when they do not believe that using an object to spank is okay. Parents are less likely to use corporal punishment when a doctor has spoken with them about the harms of corporal punishment and if they were not spanked as children. Finally, an open-ended questioning format elucidated a connection between corporal punishment use and fear and anger on the parents’ part. Removing corporal punishment from cultural norm status will require harnessing the power of healthcare professionals and targeting the emotional responses and harmful attitudes that lead to violent punishment of children.Item Open Access That Sounds About White: Parental Racial Socialization and White Youth Identity Development(2024-04-15) Culp, MackenzieThough parental racial socialization in the United States has been investigated since the 1970s, the literature almost exclusively focuses on its execution within minority families. The study at hand addresses this gap and ascertains how parental racial socialization works in White families. It unravels this question qualitatively, via semi-structured interviews with twenty students at a private university in the Southeast. The intention behind approaching college students was to gain a better sense of the kinds of racial behaviors and attitudes that White children internalize. In addition, it was hoped that interviewing college students about their parental racial socialization would provide insight into the impact that their parents have on their offsprings’ racial identities into adulthood. The findings of this paper were noteworthy, as they shed light onto how members of the dominant racial group in the twenty-first century learn to conceive of themselves and, by extension, racial others. Consistent with prior work on this topic, the main finding was that the parents of those surveyed neglected to converse with their kids about race and, for the most part, attempted to raise them “color-blind.” However, as I show, parents still passed on ideas about race, but through implicit means. A novel insight that this study provides is that White children in the twenty-first century may socialize their own parents about race once they mature and develop their own political opinions.Item Open Access The effect of the home environment on physical activity and dietary intake in preschool children.(Int J Obes (Lond), 2013-10) Østbye, T; Malhotra, R; Stroo, M; Lovelady, C; Brouwer, R; Zucker, N; Fuemmeler, BBACKGROUND: The effects of the home environment on child health behaviors related to obesity are unclear. PURPOSE: To examine the role of the home physical activity (PA) and food environment on corresponding outcomes in young children, and assess maternal education/work status as a moderator. METHODS: Overweight or obese mothers reported on the home PA and food environment (accessibility, role modeling and parental policies). Outcomes included child moderate-vigorous PA (MVPA) and sedentary time derived from accelerometer data and two dietary factors ('junk' and healthy food intake scores) based on factor analysis of mother-reported food intake. Linear regression models assessed the net effect (controlling for child demographics, study arm, supplemental time point, maternal education/work status, child body mass index and accelerometer wear time (for PA outcomes)) of the home environment on the outcomes and moderation by maternal education/work status. Data were collected in North Carolina from 2007 to 2011. RESULTS: Parental policies supporting PA increased MVPA time, and limiting access to unhealthy foods increased the healthy food intake score. Role modeling of healthy eating behaviors increased the healthy food intake score among children of mothers with no college education. Among children of mothers with no college education and not working, limiting access to unhealthy foods and role modeling reduced 'junk' food intake scores whereas parental policies supporting family meals increased 'junk' food intake scores. CONCLUSIONS: To promote MVPA, parental policies supporting child PA are warranted. Limited access to unhealthy foods and role modeling of healthy eating may improve the quality of the child's food intake.Item Open Access The effects of a universal short-term home visiting program: Two-year impact on parenting behavior and parent mental health.(Child abuse & neglect, 2023-06) Baziyants, Gayane A; Dodge, Kenneth A; Bai, Yu; Goodman, W Benjamin; O'Donnell, Karen; Murphy, Robert ABackground
At the time of childbirth, families face heightened levels of unmet need. These needs, if left unmet, can lead parents to engage in less positive parenting practices, which in turn, increase the risk of child maltreatment. Family Connects (FC) is a universal postnatal nurse home-visiting program designed to prevent child maltreatment by supporting all families in a community through one to three visits to improve parent mental health and parenting behaviors. A randomized controlled trial of FC demonstrated improving positive parenting and reducing postpartum depression through age 6 months.Objective
To determine sustained (2-year) impact of random assignment to FC on parenting behavior and parent mental health and identify heterogeneity of effects.Participants and setting
A representative subsample of 496 families that had been randomized to FC (255 treatment; 241 control) of infants born between July 1, 2009, and December 31, 2010, in Durham County, North Carolina.Methods
Demographic characteristics were collected through hospital discharge data. Treatment-blinded interviewers collected maternal reports of parenting behavior and mental health at infant age two years. Moderation and subgroup analyses were conducted to estimate heterogeneity in impact of FC.Results
Mothers assigned to FC engaged in more self-reported positive parenting relative to control mothers (B = 0.21; p < 0.05). Hispanic mothers assigned to FC reported greater sense of parenting competence (B = 1.28; p < 0.05). No significant main effect differences were identified for negative parenting, maternal depression, or father involvement.Conclusions
Assignment to FC was associated with improvements in population-level self-reported scores of positive parenting 2 years post-intervention.Item Open Access The Roles of Parenting and Moral Socialization in Obsessive-Compulsive Belief and Symptom Development(2009) Mariaskin, AmyDespite the prominence of cognitive theories of anxiety disorders, which posit that thoughts can affect the expression of psychopathology, empirical investigation of the origins of such thoughts is scant. In the study of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), a number of cognitive factors, deemed obsessive beliefs, have been identified as correlates of the disorder. Although both parenting behaviors and obsessive beliefs have demonstrated associations with obsessive-compulsive symptoms, research exploring the relations between all three of these constructs has been heretofore limited. Moreover, given the moral content of some obsessions and compulsions (e.g. praying, harm prevention techniques), it is possible that specific moral socialization techniques serve to promote obsessive beliefs. This study investigated parenting, obsessive beliefs, moral socialization and obsessive-compulsive symptoms in a large non-clinical sample (N=288). Thirty-four students who were measured as relatively high or low on obsessive beliefs subsequently completed an additional procedure in which they were interviewed about moral socialization. Results provided support for a model in which obsessive beliefs served as a mediator of the relations between parenting behaviors and symptom levels. Adding self-conscious emotions to the model as a covariate significantly improved overall fit statistics. With respect to moral socialization, few differences emerged in the moral socialization histories of individuals relatively high or low on obsessive beliefs. However, those in the high obsessive beliefs group were more likely to report relationship-centered discipline (i.e. the parent using damage to the parent-child relationship as a vehicle for punishment) than those in the low obsessive beliefs group.