Predicting Change in Parenting Stress Across Early Childhood: Child and Maternal Factors

This study examined maternal parenting stress in a sample of 430 boys and girls including those at risk for externalizing behavior problems. Children and their mothers were assessed when the children were ages 2, 4, and 5. Hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) was used to examine stability of parenting stress across early childhood and to examine child and maternal factors predicting parenting stress at age 2 and changes in parenting stress across time. Results indicated that single parenthood, maternal psychopathology, child anger proneness, and child emotion dysregulation predicted 2-year parenting stress. Child externalizing behaviors predicted initial status and changes across time in parenting stress. Stability of parenting stress was dependent upon child externalizing problems, as well as interactions between child externalizing problems and gender, and child externalizing problems and emotion regulation. Results are discussed in the context of mechanisms by which parenting stress may influence the development of child externalizing behaviors.     

Family Intervention Effects on Co-occurring Early Childhood Behavioral and Emotional Problems: A Latent Transition Analysis Approach

This study used latent transition analysis (LTA) to examine changes in early emotional and behavioral problems in children age 2 to 4 years resulting from participation in a family-centered intervention. A sample of 731 economically disadvantaged families was recruited from among participants in a national food supplement and nutrition program. Families with toddlers between age 2 and 3 were randomized either to the Family Check-Up (FCU) or to a nonintervention control group. The FCU’s linked interventions were tailored to each family’s needs. Assessments occurred at age 2, 3, and 4. The FCU followed age 2 and age 3 assessments. Latent class analyses were conducted on mother reports of behavior and emotional problems from age 2 to 4 to study transitions among the following four groups: (a) externalizing only, (b) internalizing only, (c) comorbid internalizing and externalizing, and (d) normative. LTA results revealed that participation in the FCU increased the likelihood of transitioning from either the comorbid or the internalizing class into the normative class by age 4. These results suggest family interventions in early childhood can potentially disrupt the early emergence of both emotional and behavioral problems.     

Early Childhood Externalising Behaviour Problems: Child, Parenting, and Family-related Predictors Over Time

This study examined the dynamic relationships between child, parenting, and family-related predictor variables and early childhood externalising behaviour problems. A community sample of 395 Australian children was followed longitudinally, and assessed at 4 and 6 years with the Child Behavior Checklist, Teacher Report Form, and standard measures of parenting, temperament, and familial adversity. Variables based on the average scores across the two assessments and the change in scores between assessments were utilised as predictors of parent-reported and teacher-reported externalising behaviour problems at age 6. It was hypothesised that both higher average scores and more detrimental changes in scores, would independently predict externalising problems at age 6. Multivariable analyses found that the presence of parent-reported child externalising problems in six-year-olds were predicted by: (i) the presence of parent-reported child externalising problems at age 4, (ii) higher average “teacher-reported child externalising behaviour,” “inflexible temperament,” “non-persistent temperament,” and “over-reactive parenting,” and (iii) an increased “inflexible temperament” score between age 4 and age 6. The presence of teacher-reported child externalising problems at age 6 was predicted by higher average “parent-reported child externalising behaviour,” and “over-reactive parenting.” The results provide further evidence of the adverse impact of continuing high levels of temperament difficulties and over-reactive parenting on externalising behaviour in early childhood. However, contrary to expectations, the contribution of including the dynamic change scores was limited.     

Direct Social Support for Young High Risk Children: Relations with Behavioral and Emotional Outcomes across Time

This study is unique in addressing developmental correlates of direct social support for young children in a high risk sample, in contrast to previous studies addressing social support for caregivers. Participants were drawn from a prospective, longitudinal study of at-risk children. Social support was rated from maternal interviews throughout early childhood. Support from the mother was assessed from mother-child observations. Outcomes included internalizing and externalizing behavior problems measured from first through tenth grades. The most common support providers were biological fathers, followed by grandparents and other providers. Using multilevel modeling, higher quantity, higher quality, and lower disruption of support predicted lower starting levels of behavior problems, controlling for support from the mother. Disruption was associated with change in slope. Gender differences were found for externalizing behavior intercepts. Social support provides a promotive factor for young high risk children. Implications include involving children's social support providers in prevention and intervention programs.     

Development and Validation of a Short Form of the Alabama Parenting Questionnaire

Brief assessments of parenting practices can provide important information about the development of disruptive behavior disorders in children. We examined the factor structure of a widely used assessment of parenting practices, the Alabama Parenting Questionnaire, and produced a 9-item short scale around its three supported factors: Positive Parenting, Inconsistent Discipline and Poor Supervision. The short scale was then validated in independent community samples using confirmatory factor analysis and measures of disruptive behavioral disorders in children. The scale showed good fit to a three-factor model and good convergent validity by differentiating parents of children with disruptive behavioral disorders and parents of children without such disorders. Results indicated that this new measure is an informative tool for researchers and clinicians whom require brief assessments of parenting practices relating to disruptive behavioral disorders in children.     

Economic Disadvantage in Complex Family Systems: Expansion of Family Stress Models

Economic disadvantage is associated with multiple risks to early socioemotional development. This article reviews research regarding family stress frameworks to model the pathways from economic disadvantage to negative child outcomes via family processes. Future research in this area should expand definitions of family and household to incorporate diversity and instability. This expansion would be particularly relevant for research among low-income ethnic minority families and families with young children. This line of research would highlight specific pathways to target to prevent the onset of early parental and child dysfunction.     

Predicting Early Sexual Activity with Behavior Problems Exhibited at School Entry and in Early Adolescence

Youth who initiate sexual intercourse in early adolescence (age 11–14) experience multiple risks, including concurrent adjustment problems and unsafe sexual practices. The current study tested two models describing the links between childhood precursors, early adolescent risk factors, and adolescent sexual activity: a cumulative model and a meditational model. A longitudinal sample of 694 boys and girls from four geographical locations was utilized, with data collected from kindergarten through high school. Structural equation models revealed that, irrespective of gender or race, high rates of aggressive disruptive behaviors and attention problems at school entry increased risk for a constellation of problem behaviors in middle school (school maladjustment, antisocial activity, and substance use) which, in turn, promoted the early initiation of sexual activity. Implications are discussed for developmental models of early sexual activity and for prevention programming.

An Evaluation of a Parenting Class Curriculum for Parents of Young Children: <Emphasis Type="Italic">Parenting the Strong-Willed Child</Emphasis>

Young children with high levels of acting out behaviors present a challenge for families, caregivers, and the childcare system. The Parenting the Strong-Willed Child (PSWC) parenting class curriculum program is a 6-week, group based parent education program designed for parents of children with noncompliance problems (ages 2–8). The PSWC program was offered at no cost to parents enrolled in 8 Head Start centers, and parents were invited to participate in a program evaluation study. Seventy-one families enrolled in the study and completed at least one PSWC session. From pre- to post-test, parents reported significant improvements in both the frequency and intensity of child behavior problems. Parents also reported significant reductions in parenting stress, as well as improvements in their parenting behaviors, including a reduction in the use of lax discipline techniques and emotional reactivity in the context of discipline encounters. All improvements were sustained six months later. These preliminary results are encouraging, and point to the need for a more rigorous, controlled evaluation of the PSWC parenting class curriculum.     

Maintenance of Treatment Gains: A Comparison of Enhanced,Standard, and Self-directed Triple P-Positive Parenting Program

This report describes the 3 year outcomes of three different variants of the Triple P-Positive Parenting Program, a behavioural family intervention. Families were randomly assigned to one of three intervention conditions or to a waitlist condition. At 1 year follow-up there were similar improvements on observational and self-report measures of preschooler disruptive behaviour for Enhanced, Standard and Self Directed variants of Triple P. At 3 year follow-up (completed by 139 families), each condition showed a similar level of maintenance of intervention effects. Approximately 2/3 of preschoolers who were clinically elevated on measures of disruptive behaviour at pre-intervention moved from the clinical to the non-clinical range. Across conditions, there was a comparable preventive effect for each intervention for these high risk children. The implications of the findings for the development of brief, cost effective parenting interventions within a public health framework are discussed.     

Relations Between Emotion Regulation, Parenting, and Psychopathology in Young Maltreated Children in Out of Home Care

Young maltreated children, birth to three years, represent the age group with the highest rates of maltreatment in the United States (ACYF 2007). There are few studies to date that have investigated early childhood maltreatment and its effects on emotion regulatory processes and psychopathology. In response, the current investigation uses a dyadic assessment procedure to examine the relationship between parenting, emotion regulation, and symptoms of psychopathology among maltreating and non-maltreating parent–child interactions. The participants in this study were 123 children (66 maltreated and 57 nonmaltreated) from ages 1–3. Child and parent affect and child effortful control were observed during a parent–child interaction task. Symptoms of psychopathology were measured using the Child Behavior Checklist. The maltreated children exhibited more anger, more internalizing symptomatology, and less positive affect compared to non-maltreated children. Among maltreated children, emotion dysregulation was associated with internalizing symptomatology. Moreover, these data reveal parental positive affect was associated with lower child internalizing symptomatology and parental anger was associated with higher child internalizing symptomatology in the entire sample. This investigation offers evidence that emotion dysregulation subsequent to poor dyadic interactions is associated with early child maltreatment. These data suggest that maltreated children experience difficulties in emotion regulation which may be related to their higher levels of behavioral symptomatology.     

A Comprehensive Meta-Analysis of Triple P-Positive Parenting Program Using Hierarchical Linear Modeling: Effectiveness and Moderating Variables

A meta-analysis encompassing all studies evaluating the impact of the Triple P-Positive Parenting Program on parent and child outcome measures was conducted in an effort to identify variables that moderate the program's effectiveness. Hierarchical linear models (HLM) with three levels of data were employed to analyze effect sizes. The results (N = 55 studies) indicate that Triple P causes positive changes in parenting skills, child problem behavior and parental well-being in the small to moderate range, varying as a function of the intensity of the intervention. The most salient findings of variables moderating the interventions' impact were larger effects found on parent report as compared to observational measures and more improvement associated with more intensive formats and initially more distressed families. Sample characteristics (e.g., child's age, being a boy) and methodological features (e.g., study quality) exhibited different degrees of predictive power. The analysis clearly identified several strengths of the Triple P system, most importantly its ability to effect meaningful improvement in parents and children. Some limitations pertain to the small evidence-base of certain formats of Triple P and the lack of follow-up data beyond 3 years after the intervention. Many of the present findings may be relevant to other evidence-based parenting programs.     

Self-control,parenting, and problem behavior in early childhood: A multi-method,multi-informant study

BackgroundEarly childhood self-control and parenting are suggested to play key roles in the development of child problem behavior. The current study aims to 1) replicate earlier work by examining the unique and combined effects of child self-control and parenting on child problem behavior and 2) extend earlier work by including both mother and father reports.MethodsData were used from 107 Dutch families: mothers, fathers, and their two-year old child. Child self-control was measured using both father’s and mother’s reports of effortful control and with an observed behavioral task (i.e., gift-in-bag task). Similarly, parenting (i.e., emotional availability and discipline) and child problem behavior (i.e., externalizing and internalizing problems) were measured by using both father’s and mother’s reports.ResultsChild self-control reported by fathers and mothers, but not observed self-control, was related to fewer externalizing and (mother-reported) internalizing problems. Paternal emotional availability showed a modest association with fewer child externalizing problems, maternal emotional availability was related to fewer internalizing problems. Finally, there was an interaction between father- (but not mother) reported self-control and paternal emotional availability in the prediction of child internalizing problems. No main or interaction effect was revealed for discipline.ConclusionFindings confirm prior work on self-control, parenting, and child problem behavior. Most importantly however, the current study adds to the literature by highlighting the need for additional research including maternal as well as paternal data. Specifically, insight in the unique role of fathers may shed light on aspects of child adjustment not covered by mother reports alone.     

Assessment and Decision-Making in Early Childhood Education and Intervention

Assessment within the fields of early childhood education and early childhood intervention is guided by the deductive-psychometric model, which is a framework for legitimizing constructs that arise from theories. An alternative approach, termed the inductive-experimental model, places significantly more restrictions on what constitutes a legitimate construct. In this paper, the utility of these two assessment models, one more generative and one more restrictive, are evaluated within the context of a Head Start setting. Given the pragmatic goal of informing instruction, we argue for the superiority of the more restrictive approach. Implications for early childhood intervention are also discussed.     

Externalising behaviour from infancy to mid-adolescence: Latent profiles and early predictors

The overall aim of the current study was to identify typical trajectory classes of externalising behaviour, and to identify predictors present already in infancy that discriminate the trajectory classes. 921 children from a community sample were followed over 13 years from the age of 18 months. In a simultaneously estimated model, latent class analyses and multinomial logit regression analyses suggested a five-class solution for developmental patterns of externalising problem behaviours: High stable (18% of the children), High childhood limited (5%), Medium childhood limited (31%), Adolescent onset (30%), and Low stable (16%). Six risk factors measured at 18 months significantly discriminated among the classes. Family stress and maternal age discriminated the High stable class from all the other classes. The results suggest that focusing on enduring problems in the relationship with the partner and partners' health may be important in preventive and early intervention efforts.     

Identification of Early Child and Family Risk Factors for Aggressive Victim Status in First Grade

This prospective investigation sought to discriminate children who were both aggressive towards and victimized by peers in the first grade, from those who were only aggressive, only victimized, or neither (i.e., socially adjusted), using early child and family risk factors. Two hundred thirty-eight children, their mothers, and teachers participated in a longitudinal study since birth. All three aggressor/victim subgroups showed greater temperamental dysregulation than the socially adjusted children, but only aggressive victims had significantly poorer social perception skills. Aggressive victims were distinguished from aggressors by greater exposure to maternal depression and from victims by lower levels of early inhibition, but they shared the experiences of negative family emotional expressiveness with aggressors and greater mother-child negativity with victims. The identification of early risk factors is crucial to prevention and early intervention efforts that have the potential to attenuate the long term emotional, social, and academic problems associated with aggressive victim status.     

Beyond Deficits: Intimate Partner Violence,Maternal Parenting,and Child Behavior Over Time

Exposure to intimate partner violence (IPV) has negative consequences for children’s well-being and behavior. Much of the research on parenting in the context of IPV has focused on whether and how IPV victimization may negatively shape maternal parenting, and how parenting may in turn negatively influence child behavior, resulting in a deficit model of mothering in the context of IPV. However, extant research has yet to untangle the interrelationships among the constructs and test whether the negative effects of IPV on child behavior are indeed attributable to IPV affecting mothers’ parenting. The current study employed path analysis to examine the relationships among IPV, mothers’ parenting practices, and their children’s externalizing behaviors over three waves of data collection among a sample of 160 women with physically abusive partners. Findings indicate that women who reported higher levels of IPV also reported higher levels of behavior problems in their children at the next time point. When parenting practices were examined individually as mediators of the relationship between IPV and child behavior over time, one type of parenting was significant relationship, such that IPV lead to higher authoritative parenting and lower child behavior problems. On the other hand, there was no evidence that higher levels of IPV contributed to more child behavior problems due to maternal parenting. Instead, IPV had a significant cumulative indirect effect on child behavior via the stability of both IPV and behavior over time. Implications for promoting women’s and children’s well-being in the context of IPV are discussed.     

Father Enrollment and Participation in a Parenting Intervention: Personal and Contextual Predictors

Fathers are an important, though often underrepresented, population in family interventions. Notably, the inclusion of ethnic minority fathers is particularly scarce. An understanding of factors that promote and hinder father participation may suggest strategies by which to increase fathers’ presence in studies designed to engage the family unit. The current research examined Mexican origin (MO) fathers’ involvement in a family‐focused intervention study. Participants included 495 fathers from eligible two‐parent MO families with an adolescent child. Individual, familial, and culturally relevant predictors based on father, mother, and/or child report data were collected through pretest interviews and included in two separate logistic regression analyses that predicted the following: (1) father enrollment in the study and (2) father participation in the intervention. Results indicated that higher levels of maternal education and lower levels of economic stress and interparental conflict were associated with increased father enrollment in the study. Rates of father participation in the intervention were higher among families characterized by lower levels of interparental conflict, economic stress, and Spanish language use. Results highlight the relevancy of the familial and environmental context to MO fathers’ research participation decisions. These findings as well as their implications for future research and practice are discussed.     

"Queremos Aprender": Latino Immigrants' Call to Integrate Cultural Adaptation with Best Practice Knowledge in a Parenting Intervention

Despite the unique and challenging circumstances confronting Latino immigrant families, debate still exists as to the need to culturally adapt evidence-based interventions for dissemination with this population. Following the grounded theory approach, the current qualitative investigation utilized focus group interviews with 83 Latino immigrant parents to explore the relevance of culturally adapting an evidence-based parenting intervention to be disseminated within this population. Findings from this study indicate that Latino immigrant parents want to participate in a culturally adapted parenting intervention as long as it is culturally relevant, respectful, and responsive to their life experiences. Research results also suggest that the parenting skills participants seek to enhance are among those commonly targeted by evidence-based parenting interventions. This study contributes to the cultural adaptation/fidelity balance debate by highlighting the necessity of exploring ways to develop culturally adapted interventions characterized by high cultural relevance, as well as high fidelity to the core components that have established efficacy for evidence-based parenting interventions.     

早期累积家庭风险对青少年内化问题的影响：弹性双重机制

为了解早期累积家庭风险因素对青少年内化问题的影响及其心理机制,采用累积家庭风险问卷、个人成长主动性问卷、领悟社会支持问卷以及青少年内化问题问卷对780名青少年进行调查。结果表明：（1）累积家庭风险对青少年内化问题具有显著的正向预测作用;（2）累积家庭风险因素还通过个人成长主动性和领悟社会支持的中介作用影响青少年内化问题。研究结果有助于揭示累积家庭风险对青少年内化问题的影响机制,对预防以及减少青少年内化问题行为具有一定的启示作用。