Familial and socioeconomic influences on children's well-being: an examination of preschool children in Kenya

As patterns of family formation change, it is important to know how children's lives are affected by their parents' marital and socioeconomic circumstances. Using data from the 1993 Kenya Demographic and Health Survey, this study shows that children of never married and formerly married mothers have significantly higher probabilities of polio dropout and acute undernutrition than those of monogamously married mothers. The number of male household members of working age greatly enhances the chances of full immunization and the nutritional status of children whose mothers were previously married. For children of never married mothers, the benefits of residing with males of working age are largely a function of ethnicity. The results also show that, although children are not disadvantaged nutritionally when their fathers have more than one wife, polygyny is associated with a higher probability of polio dropout and lower probability of full immunization than monogamy. Higher socioeconomic status is associated with a greater probability of full immunization and a lower probability of malnutrition but socioeconomic factors do not explain the effects of mothers' marital status. The findings underscore the complex realities of family interaction and the importance of the broader social context in accounting for variations in child welfare across diverse marital situations.     

Maternal feeding practices and childhood obesity: a focus group study of low-income mothers

OBJECTIVE: To identify maternal beliefs and practices about child feeding that are associated with the development of childhood obesity. DESIGN: Four focus groups. One group of dietitians from the Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) in the Northern Kentucky Health District and 3 groups of mothers with children enrolled in WIC. SETTING: The WIC program in the Northern Kentucky Health District. PARTICIPANTS: Fifteen WIC dietitians and 14 mothers (14 to 34 years of age) with young children (12 to 36 months of age) enrolled in WIC. RESULTS: The mothers in this study (1) believed that it was better to have a heavy infant because infant weight was the best marker of child health and successful parenting, (2) feared that their infants were not getting enough to eat, which led them to introduce rice cereal and other solid food to the diets before the recommended ages, and (3) used food to shape their children's behaviors (eg, to reward good behavior or to calm fussiness). The mothers acknowledged that some of their child-feeding practices went against the advice of their WIC nutritionists and physicians. Instead, the participants relied on their mothers as their main source of information about child feeding. CONCLUSIONS: Physicians and allied health professionals discussing childhood growth with mothers should avoid implying that infant weight is necessarily a measure of child health or parental competence. Parents who use food to satisfy their children's emotional needs or to promote good behavior in their children may promote obesity by interfering with their children's ability to regulate their own food intake. Interventions to alter child-feeding practices should include education of grandmothers.     

Fathers' and Mothers' Parenting Behavior and Beliefs as Predictors of Children's Social Adjustment in the Transition to School.

The current study focuses on the association between children's social adjustment in the transition to school and the early elementary school years and their fathers' and mothers' parenting behaviors and beliefs and quality of marital relationship. The authors found that the most competent and least problematic children from the teachers' perspectives are those whose fathers are sensitive and supportive of their children's autonomy, whose mothers' parenting beliefs support self-directed child behavior, and whose parents maintain an emotionally intimate relationship. These findings have implications for efforts to prevent early school problems in children and support the children's transitions into formal schooling. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Maternal education and children's academic achievement during middle childhood.

Despite much evidence that links mothers' educational attainment to children's academic outcomes, studies have not established whether increases in mothers' education will improve their children's academic achievement. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth on children between the ages of 6 and 12, this study examined whether increases in mothers' educational attainment are associated with changes in children's academic achievement and the quality of their home environments. Results suggest that children of young mothers with low levels of education perform better on tests of academic skills and have higher quality home environments when their mothers complete additional schooling, whereas increased maternal education does not predict improvements in the achievement or home environments of children with older and more highly educated mothers. The estimated effects of additional maternal schooling for children of these younger mothers appear to be more pronounced for children's reading than math skills. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of rewards on children's prosocial motivation: A socialization study.

This study examined the relation between mothers' attitudes/practices regarding the use of rewards and children's susceptibility to the undermining effects of rewards. We assessed the attitudes/practices regarding rewards for 72 mothers and assigned their children to a control condition or to one of four experimental conditions that differed in whether children received rewards for helping and whether children engaged in the helping task or watched other children help. Children were then given an opportunity to help in a nonreward free-choice period. Rewards enhanced helping in the immediate situation. However, rewards undermined children's helping in the free-choice period, but only for children whose mothers felt positive about using rewards. Moreover, mothers who felt more positive about using rewards reported their children to be less prosocial than children of mothers who had less positive attitudes. It was suggested that children's responses to rewards depend in part on their experiences with rewards. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of parental separation and divorce on very young children.

Data from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care were analyzed to explore effects of marital separation on children in the first 3 years of life. The sample included 73 never-married mothers and 97 separated mothers; a comparison group of 170 was conditionally randomly selected from the 2-parent families. Children in 2-parent families performed better than children in 1-parent families on assessments of cognitive and social abilities, problem behavior, attachment security, and behavior with mother. However, controlling for mothers' education and family income reduced these differences, and associations with separated-intact marital status were nonsignificant (the effect size was .01). Thus, children's psychological development was not affected by parental separation per se; it was related to mothers' income, education, ethnicity, childrearing beliefs, depressive symptoms, and behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Measuring children's perceptions of their mother's depression: The Children’s Perceptions of Others’ Depression Scale–Mother Version.

Several theoretical perspectives suggest that knowledge of children's perceptions of and beliefs about their parents' depression may be critical for understanding its impact on children. This paper describes the development and preliminary evidence for the psychometric properties of a new measure, the Children's Perceptions of Others' Depression – Mother Version (CPOD-MV), which assesses theoretically and empirically driven constructs related to children's understanding and beliefs about their mothers' depression. These constructs include children's perceptions of the severity, chronicity, and impairment of their mothers' depression; self-blame for their mother's depression; and beliefs about their abilities to deal with their mother's depression. The CPOD-MV underwent two stages of development: (1) a review of the literature to identify key constructs, focus groups to help generate items, and clinicians' ratings on the relevance and comprehensibility of the drafted items and (2) a study of the measure's psychometric properties. The literature review, focus groups, and item-reduction techniques yielded a 21-item measure. Reliability, factor structure, and discriminant, convergent, and concurrent validity were tested in a sample of 10- to 17-year-old children whose mothers had been treated for depression. The scale had good internal consistency; factor structure suggestive of a single construct; and discriminant, concurrent, convergent, and incremental validity, suggesting the importance of measuring children's perceptions of their mothers' depression beyond knowledge of mothers' depression symptom level when explaining which children have the greatest risk for emotional and behavioral problems among children of depressed mothers. These findings support continued development and beginning clinical applications of the scale. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Antecedents and consequences of mothers' autonomy support: An experimental investigation.

This study examined the effects of contextual and individual differences on mothers' autonomy support versus control on homeworklike tasks. Sixty mothers and their third-grade children worked on map and poem tasks, with mothers in either an ego-involving (high pressure) or a non-ego-involving (low pressure) condition. Later, children worked on similar tasks themselves. Mothers in the high-pressure condition were more controlling on the poem task. For the map task, mothers who came in with controlling styles and received the high-pressure manipulation were most controlling. Children whose mothers interacted in a more controlling manner wrote less creative poems when alone. Results suggest the importance of context, children's competence levels, and mothers' styles in determining levels of autonomy support. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Longitudinal pathways from marital hostility to child anger during toddlerhood: Genetic susceptibility and indirect effects via harsh parenting.

We examined direct and indirect pathways from marital hostility to toddler anger/frustration via harsh parenting and parental depressive symptoms, with an additional focus on the moderating role of genetic influences as inferred from birth parent anger/frustration. Participants were 361 linked triads of birth mothers, adoptive parents, and adopted children who were 9 (T1) and 18 (T2) months old across the study period. Results indicated an indirect effect from T1 marital hostility to T2 toddler anger/frustration via T2 parental harsh discipline. Results also indicated that the association between marital hostility and toddler anger was moderated by birth mother anger/frustration. For children whose birth mothers reported high levels of anger/frustration, adoptive parents' marital hostility at T1 predicted toddler anger/frustration at T2. This relation did not hold for children whose birth mothers reported low levels of anger/frustration. The results suggest that children whose birth mothers report elevated frustration might inherit an emotional lability that makes them more sensitive to the effects of marital hostility. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Observed maternal strategies and children's health locus of control in low-income Mexican Americans.

This study examined the relationship among mothers' health locus of control (HLOC) beliefs, their socialization strategies, and their children's HLOC beliefs in 80 low-income Mexican American families. Maternal socialization strategies were assessed from videotaped interactions of mothers and children engaged in a structured task. Factor analysis of the coded strategies yielded 4 factors: Tell Answer, Teaching, Clarify, and Reinforce. Findings indicated that maternal-health-internally scores negatively predicted mothers' use of the Tell Answer strategies and positively predicted their use of Teaching strategies. Mothers who believed that Powerful Others (e.g., health professionals) controlled their health were more likely to use the Tell Answer strategy. In contrast, mothers who believed that health was due to chance were less likely to use Teaching. Maternal use of Teaching strategies predicted children's internal HLOC, whereas maternal Tell Answer strategies predicted children's external HLOC. Findings suggest that mothers' HLOC beliefs influence the socialization strategies they use and that these strategies are associated with children's HLOC beliefs. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Marital transitions: A child's perspective.

Despite a recent leveling off of the divorce rate, almost half of the children born in the last decade will experience the divorce of their parents, and most of these children will also experience the remarriage of their parents. Most children initially experience their parents' marital rearrangements as stressful; however, children's responses to their parents marital transitions are diverse. Whereas some exhibit remarkable resiliency and in the long term may actually be enhanced by coping with these transitions, others suffer sustained developmental delays or disruptions. Others appear to adapt well in the early stages of family reorganizations but show delayed effects that emerge at a later time, especially in adolescence. The long-term effects are related more to the child's developmental status, sex, and temperament; the qualities of the home and parenting environments; and to the resources and support systems available to the parents and child than they are to divorce or remarriage per se. In recent years, researchers have begun to move away from the view that single-parent and remarried families are atypical or pathogenic families and are focusing on the diversity of children's responses and to the factors that facilitate or disrupt the development and adjustment of children experiencing their parents' marital transitions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Maternal Affection Moderates the Impact of Psychological Control on a Child's Mathematical Performance.

This study investigated the extent to which mothers' psychological control predicts their children's mathematical performance during the children's transition from preschool to primary school over and above the impact of maternal affection and behavioral control. Also investigated was the extent to which maternal affection and behavioral control moderate the impact of mothers' psychological control. Children 5-6 years old at baseline (N=196) were followed up 6 times to measure their performance in mathematics over a 3-year period from preschool to 2nd grade. Mothers were asked to fill in a questionnaire measuring their parenting styles once every year over the 3-year period. A high level of psychological control exercised by mothers predicted their children's slow progress in mathematics. However, this impact was particularly evident among those children whose mothers reported a high level of affection. No evidence was found that children's mathematical performance had any effect on their mothers' parenting styles. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Relations of Parental Expressivity and Support to Children's Coping With Daily Stress.

The relations of parents' emotional expressivity, mothers' support, and children's daily stress to children's constructive coping were examined in a sample of ninety-four 7- to 12-year-old children. For 2 weeks, children, together with their mothers, completed daily diaries of their stressful events. Mothers and fathers reported on their expression of positive, negative submissive, and negative dominant emotion. Although fathers' expressivity was not related to children's constructive coping, mothers' expression of negative emotion, particularly negative dominant emotion, was negatively related to children's constructive coping. Children's stress was negatively related to their constructive coping, and this relation was stronger for children exposed to low levels of parents' positive emotion and mothers' expression of negative submissive emotion. Children's constructive coping was positively related to mothers' supportive strategies. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Maternal Structure and Autonomy Support in Conversations About the Past: Contributions to Children's Autobiographical Memory.

The authors examined the contributions of maternal structure and autonomy support to children's collaborative and independent reminiscing. Fifty mother-child dyads discussed past experiences when the children were 40 and 65 months old. Children also discussed past events with an experimenter at each age. Maternal structure and autonomy support appeared as 2 distinct and separable components of mothers' reminiscing style and acted in an additive fashion to predict children's memory. Children whose mothers demonstrated both high structure and high autonomy support provided the greatest memory in these conversations, whereas children whose mothers were low on both dimensions provided minimal memory. The authors discuss the implications of these effects for children's autobiographical memory development. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The relative risk and timing of divorce in families of children with an autism spectrum disorder.

We compared the occurrence and timing of divorce in 391 parents of children with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and a matched representative sample of parents of children without disabilities using a survival analysis. Parents of children with an ASD had a higher rate of divorce than the comparison group (23.5% vs. 13.8%). The rate of divorce remained high throughout the son's or daughter's childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood for parents of children with an ASD, whereas it decreased following the son's or daughter's childhood (after about age 8 years) in the comparison group. Younger maternal age when the child with ASD was born and having the child born later in the birth order were positively predictive of divorce for parents of children with an ASD. Findings have implications for interventions focused on ameliorating ongoing and long-term marital strains for parents of children with an ASD. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Role of maternal depression in perceptions of child maladjustment.

We investigated (a) the relation of maternal depression to perceptions of externalizing and internalizing disorders in children and (b) quality of communication in a mother–child interaction task as a function of maternal depression and perceptions of the child. 64 children of unipolar or bipolar mothers, chronic medically ill or normal mothers were studied; clinical diagnoses, children's reports, and teachers' ratings served as objective criteria of children's maladjustment. Maternal depression defined by current symptomatology on the Beck Depression Inventory and by psychiatric status was not associated with misperceptions of psychopathology. Maternal depression interacted with children's actual behaviors to predict mothers' perceptions: nondepressed mothers were less accurate reporters of problems in children than were depressed mothers. Depressed mothers who perceived maladjustment in their disturbed children made more negative comments in interactions than did nondepressed mothers of disturbed children. The apparent mutual impact of mothers' and children's maladjustment requires fuller exploration in offspring studies. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

1988 National Maternal and Infant Health Survey: methods and response characteristics

OBJECTIVES: The 1988 National Maternal and Infant Health Survey (NMIHS) was conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics to study factors related to poor pregnancy outcome, such as adequacy of prenatal care; inadequate and excessive weight gain during pregnancy; maternal smoking, drinking, and drug use; and pregnancy and delivery complications. METHODS: The NMIHS is a nationally representative sample of 11,000 women who had live births, 4,000 who had late fetal deaths, and 6,000 who had infant deaths in 1988. Questionnaires were mailed to mothers based on information from certificates of live birth, reports of fetal death, and certificates of infant death. Information supplied by the mother, prenatal care providers, and hospitals of delivery was linked with the vital records to expand knowledge of maternal and infant health in the United States. RESULTS: The response rates in all three components of the NMIHS differed according to the mothers' characteristics. Mothers were more likely to respond if they were 20-39 years of age, were white, were married, had fewer than four children, entered prenatal care early, had more prenatal visits, had more years of education, or resided in the Midwest Region. The percent of respondents was lower for teenage mothers, mothers of races other than white, and mothers with four or more children, little prenatal care, or fewer years of education. Mothers whose infants weighed less than 2,500 grams were less likely to respond in the live-birth and infant-death components than mothers whose infants weighed 2,500 grams or more. CONCLUSIONS: The NMIHS will provide an invaluable tool for researchers and practitioners seeking solutions to perinatal and obstetric problems.     

Family Functioning and Children's Adjustment: Associations Among Parents' Depressed Mood, Marital Hostility, Parent-Child Hostility, and Children's Adjustment.

Relations between parents' depressed mood, marital conflict, parent-child hostility, and children's adjustment were examined in a community sample of 136 ten-year-olds and their parents. Videotaped observational and self-report data were used to examine these relations in path analyses. A proposed model was tested in which mothers' and fathers' depressed mood and marital hostility were associated with children's adjustment problems through disruptions in parent-child relationships. Results showed that both mothers' and fathers' marital hostility were linked to parent-child hostility, which in turn was linked to children's internalizing problems. Fathers' depressed mood was linked to children's internalizing problems indirectly through father-child hostility. Fathers' depressed mood was directly linked to children's externalizing problems and indirectly linked through father-child hostility. For mothers, marital hostility was directly linked to children's externalizing problems, and marital hostility in fathers was indirectly linked to children's externalizing problems through father-child hostility. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A rearrangement of the CDD gene at the 5'' UTR produces two types of transcripts that contain a natural antisense region

BACKGROUND: Mothers with multiple sclerosis (MS) often face fatigue and episodic exacerbations during their child-rearing years. These problems affect their support of their children, including physical affection. Children, depending on their age and gender, may or may not understand the changes. OBJECTIVES: To increase knowledge about mothers with MS concerning the relationship of fatigue and functional status to the perception of physical affection with their children, their perceptions of physical affection with their children in relation to exacerbation of their symptoms and the age and gender of their children, and the children's perceptions of their mothers' physical affection in relation to the children's age and gender and exacerbations in their mothers' symptoms. METHOD: Thirty-five mothers with relapsing-remitting MS and a child of each mother were studied, using interviews and questionnaires. RESULTS: Functional status and fatigue were not significant predictors of physical affection during an exacerbation. When the mothers' symptoms were stable, perceptions of mothers and children with respect to maternal physical affection were similar. Significant changes were reported in both the mothers' perceptions of their physical affection and the children's perceptions of their mothers' physical affection during exacerbations. There was a significant difference between the perceptions of the mothers and children regarding the magnitude of that change. Mothers significantly underestimated changes in their physical affection. CONCLUSIONS: Physical affection was selected as an important aspect of family functioning that could be affected by characteristics of illness, including exacerbations, fatigue, and functional status. However, fatigue and functional status did not explain the perception of physical affection during an exacerbation.