Associations of Parent–Child Anxious and Depressive Symptoms When a Caregiver Has a History of Depression

We examined the associations between parent and child anxious and depressive symptoms controlling for co-occurring symptoms in both. One hundred and four families participated, including 131 9–15 year old children considered at risk for anxiety and/or depression due to a history of depression in a parent. Parents and children completed questionnaires assessing depressive and anxious symptoms. Linear Mixed Models analyses controlling for the alternate parent and child symptoms indicated that both parent and child depressive symptoms and parent and child anxious symptoms were positively associated. Parental depressive symptoms were not positively associated with child anxious symptoms, and parental anxious symptoms were not positively associated with child depressive symptoms. The findings provide evidence for positive specific links between parent and child development of same-syndrome, but not cross-syndrome, symptoms when a caregiver has a history of depression.     

Pubertal Timing and Youth Internalizing Psychopathology: The Role of Relational Aggression

The current study examined relational aggression as a potential mechanism that explains the association between off-time pubertal development and internalizing problems in youth. Youth gender was also examined as a moderator for the association between these variables. It was hypothesized that early pubertal maturation would be associated with higher levels of relationally aggressive behavior which, in turn, would be associated with elevated levels of internalizing problems. Parents of 372 children between the ages of 8 and 17 were recruited through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. Parents responded to demographic information about themselves, as well as information about their child’s pubertal timing, relationally aggressive behavior, and anxiety and depressive symptoms. Findings indicated that early pubertal timing was associated with higher levels of anxiety directly, and higher levels of both anxiety and depressive symptoms indirectly through higher levels of relational aggression. In all but one of the pathways examined, gender was not found to moderate the associations between the study variables of interest. This study is the first to examine relational aggression as a mechanism by which early pubertal timing leads to internalizing problems. The findings suggest that relational aggression could be a target for intervention among early developing youth who are at risk for internalizing problems.     

Parental Depression and Economic Disadvantage: The Role of Parenting in Associations with Internalizing and Externalizing Symptoms in Children and Adolescents

This study examined the effects of parental depression symptoms, economic disadvantage, and parenting behaviors in 180 children and adolescents of depressed parents (ages 9–15 years-old). Analyses revealed that while parental depression symptoms, economic disadvantage, and disrupted parenting behaviors were related to children’s internalizing and externalizing symptoms, disrupted parenting (e.g., intrusive, neglectful parenting) accounted for the association of parental depressive symptoms and economic disadvantage with children’s symptoms. This study provides evidence that disrupted parenting may be a common or shared process through which both parental depression and economic disadvantage are associated with children’s internalizing and externalizing problems.     

The Moral Disengagement Scale: Extension with an American Minority Sample

This study extended an investigation by A. Bandura, C. Barbaranelli, G. V. Caprara, and C. Pastorelli (1996) by examining the structure, reliability, and correlates of the Moral Disengagement Scale (MDS), which measures disengagement from moral self-sanctions. Furthermore, the role of moral disengagement in the association between parenting and child behavior was examined. Two hundred and forty-five African American single-parent mothers and one of their children (mean age = 11.4 years) participated in the study. The MDS had similar factor structure, internal consistency, and demographic correlates as those reported by A. Bandura et al. (1996) with an Italian sample of children. The MDS also correlated with delinquent and aggressive child behavior, and moral disengagement partially mediated the relationship between parenting and child delinquent behavior.     

Is Adolescent Adjustment Following Parental Divorce a Function of Predivorce Adjustment?

This study examined whether adolescent adjustment problems which previously have been attributed to parental divorce exist prior to the divorce. Three groups (to-be-divorced, remain intact, and already divorced) were examined across four domains of adolescent functioning reported by multiple informants. The results indicated that adolescents from the to-be-divorced group functioned similarly to those who would remain in intact families but better than those in the already divorced group, suggesting that differences can be attributed to parental divorce and its accompanying disruption of family processes. Two of these processes, interparental conflict and parenting, were examined and failed to receive support.     

Effect of a reliability observer on the frequency of positive parent behavior recorded during naturalistic parent-child interactions

The purpose of the present study was to examine the effect of the presence of a reliability observer on the number of positive parent behaviors recorded by a primary observer during naturalistic parent-child interactions. Thirty parents and their young clinic-referred children served as subjects. After two initial home observations, a reliability observer was present to record data in observation session 3, but not session 4, for one-half the subjects. For the remaining subjects the reliability observer was present in session 4 but not session 3. The results of a 2 × 2 analysis of variance indicated a group by session interaction which resulted from an increase in maternal attention to the child in the presence of a reliability observer. Hypotheses to explain the finding are presented and implications of the results are discussed.This research was supported in part by NIMH Grant MH28859-01.