Overprotective Parenting: Helping Parents Provide Children the Right Amount of Risk and Responsibility

Overprotective parenting in low-risk environments may have negative consequences for the psychosocial development of children and youth. Though not well studied, a number of different bodies of literature can be used to speculate on the reasons for overprotective parenting and the impact it has on children. In this article, the social and familial dynamics leading to overprotection are discussed. It is shown that overprotection among middle-class families may result from poorly informed parents regarding the psychosocial developmental needs of their children for risk and responsibility and a lack of familiarity with population-wide data which shows that many of today's youth are safer that at any previous time in history. Focusing on the “risk-taker's advantage,” this article uses a case example to illustrate a three-part model of intervention to help challenge overprotective parenting while opening up safe opportunities for youth to experience manageable amounts of risk and responsibility.     

The well-being of only children

Being an only child is generally considered to be a disadvantage. Absence of siblings is thought to involve the deprivation of critical learning experiences, while the exclusive attention of parents is said to result in overindulgence and overprotection. According to such beliefs, only children develop into selfish, maladjusted and unhappy adults. Various empirical studies have contradicted these beliefs, at least where American adults are concerned. The present study considers adolescent singletons in the Netherlands. It examines the related claims that only children have a less happy youth because they are pressed into adult thinking and behavior too early and that they stand out as "little eggheads"--good at school, but not very sportsmanlike, and unpopular among their peers. Data were gathered by means of questionnaires administered to 2,511 secondary schoolchildren. The only children in this sample neither appeared to be less happy nor was their global self-esteem any lower. The "little egghead" hypothesis was only partly confirmed. Only children feel themselves to be less proficient in sports. However, they do not consider themselves better in school or less popular among peers.     

Impact of Social Networking Sites on Children in Military Families

Youth in military families experience a relatively unique set of stressors that can put them at risk for numerous psychological and behavior problems. Thus, there is a need to identify potential mechanisms by which children can gain resiliency against these stressors. One potential mechanism that has yet to be empirically studied with military youth is social networking sites (SNSs). SNSs have gained significant popularity among society, especially youth. Given the significance of these communication tools in youths’ lives, it is important to analyze how SNS use may affect military youth and their ability to cope with common military life stressors. The current review examines the potential positive and negative consequences associated with SNS use in coping with three common stressors of youth in military families: parent deployment, frequent relocation, and having a family member with a psychological or physical disability. By drawing from SNS and military literature, we predict that SNS use can be a positive tool for helping children in military families to cope with stressors. However, certain SNS behaviors can potentially result in more negative outcomes. Recommendations for future research are also discussed.     

Individual and Family Contributions to Depressive Symptoms in African American Children with Sickle Cell Disease

Depressive disorders in children with chronic illnesses have received little attention despite some evidence suggesting that these children experience increased psychological difficulties as a result of their medical condition. Most of the research on depressive disorders among children has been conducted primarily with Caucasian youth, limiting generalizability to ethnically diverse populations. Further, even less research exists on depressive disorders among African American children with Sickle Cell Disease (SCD) and for African American youth from lower socioeconomic status who are at greater risk for depressive disorders. This paper is an extensive review of the major studies conducted on depression and psychosocial aspects of SCD in African American children. The Transactional Stress and Coping model is provided as a conceptual framework. Following the review, clinical and research implications are provided, as well as an illustration of a psychoeducational family intervention with an African American child who has SCD and internalizing behaviors.     

Youth Depression in the Family Context: Familial Risk Factors and Models of Treatment

Research on parent risk factors, family environment, and familial involvement in the treatment of depression in children and adolescents is integrated, providing an update to prior reviews on the topic. First, the psychosocial parent and family factors associated with youth depression are examined. The literature indicates that a broad array of parent and family factors is associated with youth risk for depression, ranging from parental pathology to parental cognitive style to family emotional climate. Next, treatment approaches for youth depression that have been empirically tested are described and then summarized in terms of their level of parent inclusion, including cognitive–behavioral therapy, interpersonal therapy, and family systems approaches. Families have mostly not been incorporated into clinical treatment research with depressed adolescents, with only 32% of treatments including parents in treatment in any capacity. Nonetheless, the overall effectiveness of treatments that involve children and adolescents exclusively is very similar to that of treatments that include parents as agents or facilitators of change. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of these findings and directions for further research.     

Risk,Protection, and Adjustment among Youth with Incarcerated and Non-Resident Parents: A Mixed-Methods Study

Parental incarceration has been increasingly recognized as a significant threat to the development and well-being of millions of American children and youth. After decades of documenting problems among youth with incarcerated parents, researchers have now started to emphasize the critical need for research on heterogeneity and competence in this population. Towards this end, we used a mixed-methods approach to identify different subgroups of youth with incarcerated and non-resident parents (n?=?26) and to explore potential patterns of individual and family factors across groups. Cluster analysis suggested four different subgroups of youth that varied in the extent to which they exhibited behavior problems and competence. The majority of youth were classified as “adjusted” or “striving”, with comparatively few categorized as either “thriving” or “vulnerable”. Thematic analysis of qualitative data suggested that groups varied in terms of the extent to which they experienced economic and residential instability and challenges related to their social location, as well as caregiver positive expressiveness, agency, and social support. Results further indicated that although parental incarceration may be a part of an overall profile of risk, it does not appear to consistently distinguish youth separated from parents for different reasons in terms of patterns of adjustment and competence.     

Loosening the link between childhood poverty and adolescent smoking and obesity: the protective effects of social capital

Pervasive, lifelong inequalities in physical health begin in early childhood and are driven, in part, by social gradients in risk factors such as smoking and obesity. Yet not all low-income children have elevated physical-health risks as adults. The relation between income-to-needs ratio at age 9 and smoking prevalence and body fat (body mass index) at age 17 was examined in a sample of 196 rural adolescents. Income-to-needs ratio is the U.S. federal government's defined index of household income as a proportion of the poverty line. This is the first study to show that links between childhood poverty and subsequent physical-health outcomes can be loosened. At-risk youth in communities with a relatively rich array of social capital did not smoke more or have greater excess body fat compared with their more affluent counterparts.     

Foster Care Children’s Kinship Involvement and Behavioral Risks: A Longitudinal Study

Researchers have found that individual strengths (e.g., coping, optimism) are protective against behavioral risk (e.g., delinquency, suicide) among traumatized youth in foster care. However, less is known about kinship involvement (i.e., extended family support) as a social strength that can also attenuate the effects of childhood trauma, thereby reducing behavioral risk. Addressing the lack of research on kinship involvement, the present longitudinal study investigated individual strengths (IS) and kinship involvement (KI) as moderators between trauma experiences (TE) and risk behaviors (RB) among 336 youth, ages 6 to 13, who entered the Illinois child welfare system between 2011 and 2014. Controlling for Time 1 (T1) RB, T1 IS, age, gender, and ethnicity, we utilized a three-level Hierarchical Generalized Linear Model to analyze TE?×?KI and TE?×?IS at T2. The study found that KI was negatively associated with RB (β16?=??.08, Event Rate Ratio [ERR]?=?0.92, p?=?<.01), suggesting that youth with more KI had relatively lower RB trajectories. Further, the TE?×?IS interaction was significant in the model (β21?=??.05, ERR?=?0.95, p?<?.01); TE was positively associated with RB at lower levels of IS but not higher levels of IS. These results highlight the importance of assessing children’s kinship networks and individual strengths early in foster care.     

Parental Meta-Emotion Philosophy and Emotion Coaching in Families of Children and Adolescents with an Anxiety Disorder

Using a multi-method approach, this study examined differences in parental meta-emotional philosophy (including, parental emotional awareness and emotion coaching) for families with anxiety disordered (AD; n = 74) and non-AD (n = 35) children (aged 7 to 15). Further, it was investigated whether children’s emotion regulation (ER) varied across the AD and non-AD groups. Parent(s) were interviewed about their awareness of emotions and emotion coaching; completed a battery of questionnaires that included a measure assessing children’s emotion regulation; and engaged in a parent-child discussion task. Results indicated that compared to parents of non-AD youth, parents of AD youth were less aware of their own emotions and their children’s emotions, and these results varied by emotion type. Parents of AD youth engaged in significantly less emotion coaching than parents of non-AD youth. AD youth were identified as having significantly greater difficulty regulating their emotions when compared to non-AD youth. Implications for the role of parental meta-emotional philosophy and AD youth’s emotion regulation are discussed.     

Mothers’ and Adolescents’ Perceptions of Family Environment and Adolescent Social-Emotional Functioning

Research has emphasized the importance of the relationship between family functioning and adolescent behavioral development. The present study examines family environment and social-emotional functioning of primarily minority adolescents, viewed from both adolescents’ and mothers’ perspectives. Participants were a school-based sample of adolescents with and without risk for emotional and behavioral disabilities and their mothers (N = 86 dyads). Results suggested an association between the mothers’ views of their adolescent children’s problem behaviors and the adolescents’ self-ratings of risk-taking behaviors across 5 years. Overall, mothers of the at risk youth receiving special education services reported higher ratings of youth problem behaviors, but results also indicated that mothers of the at risk adolescent boys not receiving special education services perceived greater depressive symptoms in their children and more family conflict in their homes. Mothers of youth at risk but not receiving special education services experienced higher levels of stress associated with being a parent than mothers of the not-at-risk adolescents. The parent measures of adolescent behavior and depressive symptoms, family conflict, and parental stress were not predictive of the social-emotional functioning of these adolescents in the multilevel models. Implications of these findings for early identification and family focused intervention programs are discussed.     

Relation Between Parent Psychiatric Symptoms and Youth Problems: Moderation through Family Structure and Youth Gender

Links between parents’ psychiatric symptoms and their children’s behavioral and emotional problems have been widely documented in previous research, and the search for moderators of this association has begun. However, family structure (single versus dual-parent households) has received little attention as a potential moderator, despite indirect evidence that risk may be elevated in single-parent homes. Two other candidate moderators—youth gender and age—have been tested directly, but with inconsistent findings across studies, perhaps in part because studies have differed in whether they used youth clinical samples and in which informants (parents vs. youths) reported on youth problems. In the present study, we examined these three candidate moderators using a sample of exclusively clinic-referred youths (N?=?333, 34 % girls, aged 7–14,) and assessing youth problems through both parent- and youth-reports. Both family structure and youth gender emerged as robust moderators across parent and youth informants. Parent symptoms were associated with youth internalizing and externalizing problems in single-parent but not dual-parent homes; and parent symptoms were associated with youth internalizing problems among boys, but not girls. The moderator findings suggest that the risks associated with parent psychopathology may not be uniform but may depend, in part, on family structure and youth gender.     

A review of the literature on Pacific Island youth offending in New Zealand

This review examines the current literature on Pacific youth offending in New Zealand. Pacific Island youth offenders are over-represented in the rates of violent offenses, despite not being overly represented in youth offending statistics. A major concern is that the Pacific population has the largest percentage of children and young people under 15 years old in New Zealand. Therefore, this is an issue to be faced by Pacific and wider communities in New Zealand. We focus on risk factors of offending, and its current impacts on Pacific Island youth in New Zealand. A literature review was conducted to explore some of the risk factors for offending looking at New Zealand studies and government reports. This was followed by a review of overseas literature regarding Pacific youths and their offending behavior. Following this, ethnic minorities were included in the literature review from New Zealand and international perspectives. Expectedly, results in this area are sparse. However, a number of efforts have been made to address this gap in the literature which this review included. The findings in this review make future recommendations for Pacific youth with offending behavior. These include that ethnicity should be taken into account when addressing research on youth offenders; data relating to the youth offender such as social and demographic history should also be considered for a more collaborative approach to researching and understanding this population; and more targeted studies towards this population are needed to improve the overall health of the Pacific Island population in New Zealand and overseas. Finally, existing programs and interventions currently in place for our Pacific youths with offending behavior needs to be evaluated to ensure it continues to meet the dynamic needs of our Pacific youth population.     

School-aged Children’s Psychobiological Divergence as a Prospective Predictor of Health Risk Behaviors in Adolescence

Recent attachment research suggests that children with avoidant attachment often underreport their psychological distress compared to their physiologic indicators of distress (neuroendocrine reactivity, startle response, event-related potentials). This pattern of behavior (referred to as psychobiological divergence) may confer risk for suboptimal coping behaviors, including substance use, sexual risk-taking, and non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI), because individuals who are not aware of or cannot express their emotional needs may engage in maladaptive strategies to regulate their emotions. In the current pilot study (N?=?45 youth), we investigate whether psychobiological divergence of neuroendocrine and self-reported reactivity in middle childhood prospectively predicts health risk behaviors (HRBs) in adolescence. The results revealed that divergence was significantly associated with adolescents’ substance use and non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI), but not with their sexual behavior. Among adolescents currently reporting low levels of attachment security, divergence was associated with greater self-reported NSSI. Our results provide initial evidence that psychobiological divergence confers risk for substance use and NSSI in combination with current relational distress. We discuss the implications of our findings for adolescent development and clinical risk.     

Understanding Strengths in Relation to Complex Trauma and Mental Health Symptoms within Child Welfare

Strengths can have a potent effect in mitigating the impact of trauma on mental health needs and functioning. Yet, evidence is limited on the role that strengths may have in ameliorating trauma-related or mental health symptoms over time. Providing a comprehensive assessment that includes strengths, as well as needs, is an important step in making appropriate service recommendations for youth in child welfare. This study assessed 7,483 children and adolescents entering an intensive stabilization program through the Illinois child welfare system. The interaction of individual, child strengths in relation to complex trauma exposure, traumatic stress symptoms, risk behaviors, and other mental health needs were examined. Results indicated strengths are relatively stable over time and inversely associated with several negative outcomes, including risk behaviors (?.32, p?<?.001), emotional/ behavioral needs (?.33, p?<?.001) and overall functioning (?.47, p?<?.001). Traumatic stress symptoms were also related to increases in these negative outcomes. Overall, strengths had a buffering effect on traumatic stress symptoms and outcomes over time. The role of strengths in relation to traumatic stress symptoms, however, was less consistent. Youth with histories of complex trauma exposure had significantly fewer useable strengths than youth without this exposure. However, strengths improved for both youth with and without complex trauma exposure over the course of stabilization services. These findings suggest that early identification and development of child strengths can mitigate risk-taking behaviors, mental health, and functional difficulties among youth in the child welfare system. Implications for more targeted trauma-informed and strengths-based assessment, and treatment/service planning are discussed.     

Interactive Effects of Psychosocial Stress and Early Pubertal Timing on Youth Depression and Anxiety: Contextual Amplification in Family and Peer Environments

While off-time pubertal development has emerged as a potential risk factor for both symptoms of depression and anxiety in youth, the literature is mixed and inconsistent as to (1) how early versus late pubertal timing confers risk for both boys and girls, (2) if the conferred risk is distinct between symptoms of anxiety and depression, and (3) under what social contexts (e.g., family environment, peer relationships) off-time pubertal development may emerge as a potent risk factor for these symptoms. The present study examined the impact of perceived pubertal timing on symptoms of anxiety and depression in two distinct psychosocial contexts: parent’s perceptions of their own harsh parenting and parent’s perceptions of their child’s peer problems. The sample consisted of 412 parents (M = 38.6 years old, SD = 7.8, 60.4 % mothers) of children between the ages of 8 and 17 (M = 12.13, SD = 2.97, 45.4 % girls). All constructs were assessed by parent reports. Linear multiple regression analyses revealed that the interaction between earlier pubertal timing and greater peer problems was significantly related to higher youth depressive and anxiety symptoms. The interaction between earlier pubertal timing and greater harsh discipline was significantly related to higher youth anxiety but not depressive symptoms. Youth gender did not qualify findings. Results suggest that the contextual amplification process of early pubertal timing may occur in both high stress family and peer environments and impact both girls and boys.     

Expanding the concept of birthparent loss to orphans: Exploratory findings from adolescents in institutional care in South Korea

Conservative estimates of the number of orphaned and abandoned children suggest there are approximately 132 million worldwide, of whom the majority reside in Asia followed by Sub-Saharan Africa. Research on alternative care for children in need of parental protection have largely been siloed by care setting (i.e. institutional care, adoption, foster care) without consideration of risk factors across care types. One factor specific to alternative care that occurs for all children across care settings is disruption and disconnection of birth parents as a consequence of out-of-home placement. Thus, the purpose of this cross-sectional study of 170 adolescents in institutional care in South Korea was to explore whether a common risk factor specific to the experience of family removal and placement in alternative care, cognitive appraisal of birth parent loss, was present and was a risk factor for more mental health and behavior problems. Findings affirmed the majority of adolescents in institutional care had thoughts about birth parents, but most did not express negative emotions towards birth parents. A more negative appraisal of birth parent loss was found to be a significant predictor of more depressive symptoms, PTSD symptoms, and internalizing behavior problems, but not more externalizing behavior problems. Findings suggest cognitive appraisal of birth parent loss may be a risk factor for more mental health and internal behavior problems for youth in institutional care and that systems of alternative care need to assist youth in having information about their birth parents regardless of contact.     

Parents’ Intelligence Mindsets Relate to Child Internalizing Problems: Moderation Through Child Gender

Parental belief systems can strongly influence children’s affect, behavior, and mental health. However, associations between specific kinds of parental beliefs and children’s mental health have not been thoroughly explored. One relevant belief system is parental intelligence mindset: beliefs about the malleability of intelligence. Children of parents who view intelligence as static (known as a fixed intelligence mindset), rather than malleable through effort (known as a growth intelligence mindset), experience more academic, self-regulatory, and motivational difficulty. However, associations between parental intelligence mindset and child mental health problems are unclear. Accordingly, we tested whether parents’ intelligence mindsets related to internalizing problems in their children (N?=?131, ages 5–8). Overall, parents with stronger fixed intelligence mindsets had children with greater internalizing problems, particularly social anxiety (characterized by fear of negative evaluation). Results further revealed that parents’ fixed intelligence mindsets were associated with overall internalizing problems and depressive symptoms in boys, but not girls. Results are the first to suggest and parse direct links between parents’ intelligence mindsets and youth internalizing problems.     

An introduction to mixture item response theory models

Mixture item response theory (IRT) allows one to address situations that involve a mixture of latent subpopulations that are qualitatively different but within which a measurement model based on a continuous latent variable holds. In this modeling framework, one can characterize students by both their location on a continuous latent variable as well as by their latent class membership. For example, in a study of risky youth behavior this approach would make it possible to estimate an individual's propensity to engage in risky youth behavior (i.e., on a continuous scale) and to use these estimates to identify youth who might be at the greatest risk given their class membership. Mixture IRT can be used with binary response data (e.g., true/false, agree/disagree, endorsement/not endorsement, correct/incorrect, presence/absence of a behavior), Likert response scales, partial correct scoring, nominal scales, or rating scales. In the following, we present mixture IRT modeling and two examples of its use. Data needed to reproduce analyses in this article are available as supplemental online materials at http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jsp.2016.01.002.     

Externalizing Outcomes of Youth with and without ADHD: Time-Varying Prediction by Parental ADHD and Mediated Effects

Although parental attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a risk factor for multiple negative youth outcomes, it is unknown how change in parental ADHD symptoms over time affects change in child ADHD symptoms; moreover, mediators of these predictions are largely unknown. Parents of 230 5–10 year-old children (68 % male) with (n = 120) and without ADHD (n = 110) were followed prospectively for 6–7 years across three separate waves. Parents self-reported their ADHD and depression symptoms and similarly rated offspring ADHD, oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), and conduct disorder (CD) symptoms; youth self-reported their substance use. Temporally-ordered mediators consisted of parental expressed emotion (EE), derived from the Five Minute Speech Sample, and self-reported positive and negative parenting behavior. Controlling for key demographics and parental depression symptoms, increasing parental ADHD symptoms were a time-varying predictor of worsening youth ADHD and ODD, although it was unrelated to change in CD and alcohol/substance use. Next, although EE facets (i.e., criticism, emotional over-involvement) did not mediate these predictions, negative parenting behavior significantly mediated predictions of youth ADHD (and marginally in predictions of ODD) from parental ADHD symptoms. These quasi-experimental findings suggest that parental ADHD symptoms are a potential unique causal risk factor for offspring ADHD and ODD; also, preventing negative parenting behavior secondary to parental ADHD symptoms is critical to improve trajectories of youth ADHD and ODD. We consider parental ADHD symptoms and family factors underlying emergent externalizing problems utilizing a developmental psychopathology framework, including implications for intervention and prevention.