Caretaker
My Mother and Me: Why Tiger Mothers Motivate Asian Americans But Not European Americans
Alyssa Fu & Hazel Rose Markus
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
“Tiger Mother” Amy Chua provoked a culture clash with her claim that controlling parenting in Asian American (AA) contexts produces more successful children than permissive parenting in European American (EA) contexts. At the heart of this controversy is a difference in the normative models of self that guide behavior. Ideas and practices prevalent in AA contexts emphasize that the person is and should be interdependent with one’s close others, especially one’s mother. In contrast, EA contexts emphasize the person as independent, even from one’s mother. We find that AA compared with EA high school students experience more interdependence with their mothers and pressure from them, but that the pressure does not strain their relationship with their mothers. Furthermore, following failure, AAs compared with EAs are more motivated by their mothers, and AAs are particularly motivated by pressure from their mothers when it conveys interdependence.
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Paula Sheppard, Justin Garcia & Rebecca Sear
PLoS ONE, March 2014
Abstract:
Childhood family structure has been shown to play an important role in shaping a child's life course development, especially in industrialised societies. One hypothesis which could explain such findings is that parental investment is likely to be diluted in families without both natural parents. Most empirical studies have examined the influence of only one type of family disruption or composition (e.g. father absence) making it difficult to simultaneously compare the effects of different kinds of family structure on children's future outcomes. Here we use a large, rich data source (n = 16,207) collected by Alfred Kinsey and colleagues in the United States from 1938 to 1963, to examine the effects of particular childhood family compositions and compare between them. The dataset further allows us to look at the effects of family structure on an array of traits relating to sexual maturity, reproduction, and risk-taking. Our results show that, for both sexes, living with a single mother or mother and stepfather during childhood was often associated with faster progression to life history events and greater propensity for risk-taking behaviours. However, living with a single father or father and stepmother was typically not significantly different to having both natural parents for these outcomes. Our results withstand adjustment for socioeconomic status, age, ethnicity, age at puberty (where applicable), and sibling configuration. While these results support the hypothesis that early family environment influences subsequent reproductive strategy, the different responses to the presence or absence of different parental figures in the household rearing environment suggests that particular family constructions exert independent influences on childhood outcomes. Our results suggest that father-absent households (i.e. single mothers or mothers and stepfathers) are most highly associated with subsequent fast life history progressions, compared with mother-absent households, and those with two natural parents.
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Are Television and Video Games Really Harmful for Kids?
Makiko Nakamuro et al.
Contemporary Economic Policy, forthcoming
Abstract:
Are watching television (TV) and playing video games really harmful for children's development? By using a unique longitudinal dataset with detailed information on children's development and health, we examined the causal effect of hours of TV watched or of video games played on school-aged children's problem behavior, orientation to school, and obesity. The results suggested that the answer to the question is yes, but the magnitude of the effect is sufficiently small to be considered as negligible. The results were robust to within-twin-fixed effects.
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Parenthood as a Terror Management Mechanism: The Moderating Role of Attachment Orientations
Erez Yaakobi, Mario Mikulincer & Phillip Shaver
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
Six studies examined the hypothesis that parenthood serves a terror management function, with effects that are moderated by attachment orientations. In Studies 1 and 2, mortality salience, as compared with control conditions, increased the self-reported vividness and implicit accessibility of parenthood-related cognitions. In Studies 3 and 4, activating parenthood-related thoughts reduced death-thought accessibility and romantic intimacy following mortality salience. In Study 5, heightening the salience of parenthood-related obstacles increased death-thought accessibility. Across the five studies, the effects were significant mainly among participants who scored relatively low on avoidant attachment. In Study 6, avoidant people also reacted to mortality salience with more positive parenthood-related cognitions following an experimental manipulation that made parenthood compatible with their core strivings. Overall, the findings suggest that parenthood can have an anxiety-buffering effect that is moderated by attachment-related avoidance.
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Christina Diaz
Social Science Research, September 2014, Pages 1–15
Abstract:
Intergenerational transmissions extend across a number of family-related behaviors, including marriage timing, fertility, and divorce. Surprisingly, few studies investigate the link between the fathering men experience and the fathering they ultimately engage in. I use data on the grandfathers and fathers of the 2001 U.S. birth cohort - measured in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (N=4,050) - to test whether men’s perception of the parenting they received influences their subsequent paternal self-assessments and behaviors. I find a nonlinear association between experiencing warm fathering and men’s self-assessed parenting quality and stress. Men with particularly warm fathers are more likely to report being good fathers themselves. Those who report having the harshest fathers also exhibit better paternal self-perceptions and lower stress. Perceptions of paternal warmth show similar associations with men’s fathering engagement. This research sheds light on the significance of family dynamics and how a legacy of fathering may contribute to inequality.
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Wendy Goldberg & Rachel Lucas-Thompson
Psychology of Women Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
The goals of the current study were to apply the construct of stereotype accuracy to the domain of college women’s perceptions of the effects of full-time maternal employment on children. Both accuracy/inaccuracy and positive/negative direction were examined. Participants were 1,259 college women who provided stereotyped projections about the effects of full-time employment on children’s IQ scores, formal achievement tests, school grades, and internalizing and externalizing behavior problems. Their stereotype effect sizes were compared to meta-analytic effect sizes used to estimate the “actual” effects of maternal employment on children. Individual differences in these stereotypes were also examined. Results indicate that, on average, college women overestimated the negative effects of full-time maternal employment on child outcomes, especially behavior problems. Significant variability in the direction and accuracy of the stereotypes was explained by individual characteristics such as gender ideology, extrinsic work values, and beliefs about the costs of maternal employment. Concerns are that college-educated young women may retreat from the labor force due to stereotypes about the effects of their future employment on children. Efforts by researchers, practitioners, and policy makers should be directed toward disseminating accurate information and dispelling myths about the likely impact of maternal employment on children’s development.
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Beth Green et al.
Children and Youth Services Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
The high societal and personal costs of child maltreatment make identification of effective early prevention programs a high research priority. Early Head Start (EHS), a dual generational program serving low-income families with children prenatally through age three years, is one of the largest federally funded programs for infants and toddlers in the United States. A national randomized trial found EHS to be effective in improving parent and child outcomes, but its effectiveness in reducing child maltreatment was not assessed. The current study used administrative data from state child welfare agencies to examine the impact of EHS on documented abuse and neglect among children from seven of the original seventeen programs in the national EHS randomized controlled trial. Results indicated that children in EHS had significantly fewer child welfare encounters between the ages of five and nine years than did children in the control group, and that EHS slowed the rate of subsequent encounters. Additionally, compared to children in the control group, children in EHS were less likely to have a substantiated report of physical or sexual abuse, but more likely to have a substantiated report of neglect. These findings suggest that EHS may be effective in reducing child maltreatment among low-income children, in particular, physical and sexual abuse.
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Objective and subjective socioeconomic gradients exist for sleep in children and adolescents
Denise Jarrin, Jennifer McGrath & Elizabeth Quon
Health Psychology, March 2014, Pages 301-305
Objective: Socioeconomic position (SEP) is inversely associated with many health outcomes, yielding a socioeconomic gradient in health. In adults, low SEP is associated with short sleep duration, poorer sleep quality, and difficulty initiating and maintaining sleep. Relatively little is known about this relation in youth. The aim of the present study was to examine whether socioeconomic gradients exist for various sleep indices among a healthy sample of children and adolescents.
Method: Participants took part in the larger Healthy Heart Project and included 239 youth (69.6% Caucasian; 45.6% female), aged 8–17 years (M = 12.6, SD = 1.9). Parental income and education were used to measure objective SEP. The Subjective Social Status Scale-Youth Version was used to measure subjective SEP. Sleep duration, sleep quality, daytime sleepiness, and sleep disturbances were assessed through self- and parent-report.
Results: In children, objective SEP was related with sleep duration (β = .35, p < .01), although subjective SEP was related with daytime sleepiness (βavg = .33, p < .01) and parent-reported sleep duration (β = .23, p < .05). In adolescents, subjective SEP was related with sleep quality (β = .28, p < .01) and parent-reported sleep duration (β = −.18, p < .05), even after controlling for objective SEP.
Conclusions: Socioeconomic gradients were observed for multiple sleep measures in youth. Objective parental SEP was related with sleep complaints (e.g., sleep disturbances), and subjective SEP was related with sleep quality and daytime sleepiness. Findings suggest sleep may be one pathway underlying the socioeconomic gradient in health. Future research should aim to elucidate how distinct sleep constructs may explain how socioeconomic status “gets under the skin” to affect health.
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L.D. Rosen et al.
Computers in Human Behavior, June 2014, Pages 364–375
Abstract:
The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no screen time for children under the age of 2 and limited screen time for all children. However, no such guidelines have been proposed for preteens and teenagers. Further, research shows that children, preteens, and teenagers are using massive amounts of media and those with more screen time have been shown to have increased obesity, reduced physical activity, and decreased health. This study examined the impact of technology on four areas of ill-being — psychological issues, behavior problems, attention problems and physical health — among children (aged 4–8), preteens (9–12), and teenagers (13–18) by having 1030 parents complete an online, anonymous survey about their own and their child’s behaviors. Measures included daily technology use, daily food consumption, daily exercise, and health. Hypothesis 1, which posited that unhealthy eating would predict impaired ill-being, was partially supported, particularly for children and preteens. Hypothesis 2, which posited that reduced physical activity would predict diminished health levels, was partially supported for preteens and supported for teenagers. Hypothesis 3, that increased daily technology use would predict ill-being after factoring out eating habits and physical activity, was supported. For children and preteens, total media consumption predicted ill-being while for preteens specific technology uses, including video gaming and electronic communication, predicted ill-being. For teenagers, nearly every type of technological activity predicted poor health. Practical implications were discussed in terms of setting limits and boundaries on technology use and encouraging healthy eating and physical activity at home and at school.
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Mothers’ unresolved trauma blunts amygdala response to infant distress
Sohye Kim et al.
Social Neuroscience, forthcoming
Abstract:
While the neurobiology of post-traumatic stress disorder has been extensively researched, much less attention has been paid to the neural mechanisms underlying more covert but pervasive types of trauma (e.g., those involving disrupted relationships and insecure attachment). Here, we report on a neurobiological study documenting that mothers’ attachment-related trauma, when unresolved, undermines her optimal brain response to her infant’s distress. We examined the amygdala blood oxygenation level-dependent response in 42 first-time mothers as they underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging scanning, viewing happy- and sad-face images of their own infant, along with those of a matched unknown infant. Whereas mothers with no trauma demonstrated greater amygdala responses to the sad faces of their own infant as compared to their happy faces, mothers who were classified as having unresolved trauma in the Adult Attachment Interview (Dynamic Maturational Model) displayed blunted amygdala responses when cued by their own infants’ sadness as compared to happiness. Unknown infant faces did not elicit differential amygdala responses between the mother groups. The blunting of the amygdala response in traumatized mothers is discussed as a neural indication of mothers’ possible disengagement from infant distress, which may be part of a process linking maternal unresolved trauma and disrupted maternal caregiving.
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Opting Out, Scaling Back, or Business-as-Usual? An Occupational Assessment of Women's Employment
Liana Christin Landivar
Sociological Forum, March 2014, Pages 189–214
Abstract:
After decades of growth, women's labor force participation stagnated in the 2000s, prompting widespread interest in work–family balance and opting out. However, much of the research and media attention is limited to small samples of women in managerial and professional occupations. Using data from the 2009 American Community Survey, this article examines mothers' labor force participation and work hours across 92 occupations to assess whether mothers in nonmanagerial and nonprofessional occupations exhibit similar work patterns. I find that mothers in managerial and professional occupations are the least likely to remain out of the labor force but most likely to work reduced hours. The results indicate that there is significant occupational variation in women's work–family strategies, and these comparisons provide insight into the differential structures of disadvantage that encourage different work–family outcomes.
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Kinship and Nonrelative Foster Care: The Effect of Placement Type on Child Well-Being
Sarah Font
Child Development, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study uses a national sample of 1,215 children, ages 6–17, who spent some time in formal kinship or nonrelative foster care to identify the effect of placement type on academic achievement, behavior, and health. Several identification strategies are used to reduce selection bias, including ordinary least squares, change score models, propensity score weighting, and instrumental variables regression. The results consistently estimate a negative effect of kin placements on reading scores, but kin placements appear to have no effect on child health, and findings on children's math and cognitive skills test scores and behavioral problems are mixed. Estimated declines in both academic achievement and behavioral problems are concentrated among children who are lower functioning at baseline.
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The development of children’s inhibition: Does parenting matter?
Isabelle Roskam et al.
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, June 2014, Pages 166–182
Abstract:
Whereas a large body of research has investigated the maturation of inhibition in relation to the prefrontal cortex, far less research has been devoted to environmental factors that could contribute to inhibition improvement. The aim of the current study was to test whether and to what extent parenting matters for inhibition development from 2 to 8 years of age. Data were collected from 421 families, with 348 mother–child dyads and 342 father–child dyads participating. Children’s inhibition capacities and parenting behaviors were assessed in a three-wave longitudinal data collection. The main analyses examined the impact of parenting on the development of children’s inhibition capacities. They were conducted using a multilevel modeling (MLM) framework. The results lead to the conclusion that both mothers and fathers contribute through their child-rearing behavior to their children’s executive functioning, even when controlling for age-related improvement (maturation) and important covariates such as gender, verbal IQ, and place of enrollment. More significant relations between children’s inhibition development and parenting were displayed for mothers than for fathers. More precisely, parenting behaviors that involve higher monitoring, lower discipline, inconsistency and negative controlling, and a positive parenting style are associated with good development of inhibition capacities in children.
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Kalina Michalska et al.
Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, February 2014
Background: Well-validated models of maternal behavior in small-brain mammals posit a central role of oxytocin in parenting, by reducing stress and enhancing the reward value of social interactions with offspring. In contrast, human studies are only beginning to gain insights into how oxytocin modulates maternal behavior and affiliation.
Methods: To explore associations between oxytocin receptor genes and maternal parenting behavior in humans, we conducted a genetic imaging study of women selected to exhibit a wide range of observed parenting when their children were 4–6 years old.
Results: In response to child stimuli during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), hemodynamic responses in brain regions that mediate affect, reward, and social behavior were significantly correlated with observed positive parenting. Furthermore, single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) (rs53576 and rs1042778) in the gene encoding the oxytocin receptor were significantly associated with both positive parenting and hemodynamic responses to child stimuli in orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), and hippocampus.
Conclusions: These findings contribute to the emerging literature on the role of oxytocin in human social behavior and support the feasibility of tracing biological pathways from genes to neural regions to positive maternal parenting behaviors in humans using genetic imaging methods.
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Parental Death During Childhood and Subsequent School Performance
Lisa Berg et al.
Pediatrics, April 2014, Pages 682-689
Objectives: Parental death during childhood has been linked to increased mortality and mental health problems in adulthood. School failure may be an important mediator in this trajectory. We investigated the association between parental death before age 15 years and school performance at age 15 to 16 years, taking into account potentially contributing factors such as family socioeconomic position (SEP) and parental substance abuse, mental health problems, and criminality.
Methods: This was a register-based national cohort study of 772 117 subjects born in Sweden between 1973 and 1981. Linear and logistic regression models were used to analyze school performance as mean grades (scale: 1–5; SD: 0.70) and school failure (finished school with incomplete grades). Results are presented as β-coefficients and odds ratios (ORs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs).
Results: Parental death was associated with lower grades (ORs: –0.21 [95% CI: –0.23 to –0.20] and –0.17 [95% CI: –0.19 to –0.15]) for paternal and maternal deaths, respectively. Adjustment for SEP and parental psychosocial factors weakened the associations, but the results remained statistically significant. Unadjusted ORs of school failure were 2.04 (95% CI: 1.92 to 2.17) and 1.51 (95% CI: 1.35 to 1.69) for paternal and maternal deaths. In fully adjusted models, ORs were 1.40 (95% CI: 1.31 to 1.49) and 1.18 (95% CI: 1.05 to 1.32). The higher crude impact of death due to external causes (ie, accident, violence, suicide) (OR: –0.27 [90% CI: –0.28 to –0.26]), compared with natural deaths (OR: –0.16 [95% CI: –0.17 to –0.15]), was not seen after adjustment for SEP and psychosocial situation of the family.
Conclusions: Parental death during childhood was associated with lower grades and school failure. Much of the effect, especially for deaths by external causes, was associated with socially adverse childhood exposures.
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Genetics of parenting: The power of the dark side
Bonamy Oliver, Maciej Trzaskowski & Robert Plomin
Developmental Psychology, April 2014, Pages 1233-1240
Abstract:
Reviews of behavioral genetic studies note that “control” aspects of parenting yield low estimates of heritability, while “affective” aspects (parental feelings) yield moderate estimates. Research to date has not specifically considered whether positive and negative aspects of parenting — for both feelings and control — may explain these etiological distinctions. We addressed this issue using parent reports of parenting in a large twin sample in the United Kingdom, at ages 9 (N = 2,260 twin pairs), 12 (N = 3,850 twin pairs) and 14 (N = 2,293 twin pairs) years. Our findings supported previous work indicating that parental feelings show greater heritability (h2) than control (across all ages, mean h2 feelings = .42, control = .13). Of specific interest is our novel finding that for control as well as for feelings, the heritability for negative aspects of parenting was greater than for positive aspects (e.g., across all ages, mean h2 total negativity = .44; total positivity = .12). Results across the 3 ages using common pathway models for all scales further endorsed our hypotheses. Previous research has shown that children’s genetically driven characteristics elicit parenting; our pattern of our results suggests that what is critical is the “dark” side of these characteristics for eliciting negativity from parents, whether feelings toward the child or control strategies are considered. Improving understanding of how the environment is shaped by the dark side is important theoretically and, ultimately, for targeting intervention.
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The Consequences of Paternal Incarceration for Maternal Neglect and Harsh Parenting
Kristin Turney
Social Forces, forthcoming
Abstract:
The rise in mass incarceration, as well as its unequal distribution across the population, may widen inequalities among individuals and families. In this manuscript, I use data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a data source uniquely situated to understand the collateral consequences of incarceration, to consider the consequences of paternal incarceration for an overlooked aspect of family life: maternal parenting (measured by neglect, psychological aggression, and physical aggression). Results show that, among parents living together prior to paternal incarceration, confinement has modest, positive associations with maternal neglect and physical aggression, and that changes in family life (including relationship characteristics, economic insecurity, and mental health) following incarceration explain some of these associations. Additionally, there is some evidence that the consequences of paternal incarceration for neglect are strongest among mothers with a low propensity for sharing a child with a recently incarcerated father. Taken together, these results suggest that incarceration — given its concentration among disadvantaged families and, at least in one domain, its most consequential effects for the most advantaged of these disadvantaged families — has complicated and countervailing implications for inequalities in family life.
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Cumulative Risks of Foster Care Placement by Age 18 for U.S. Children, 2000–2011
Christopher Wildeman & Natalia Emanuel
PLoS ONE, March 2014
Abstract:
Foster care placement is among the most tragic events a child can experience because it more often than not implies that a child has experienced or is at very high risk of experiencing abuse or neglect serious enough to warrant state intervention. Yet it is unclear how many children will experience foster care placement at some point between birth and age 18. Using synthetic cohort life tables and data from the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS), we estimated how many U.S. children were placed in foster care between birth and age 18, finding support for three conclusions. First, up to 5.91% of all U.S. children were ever placed in foster care between their birth and age 18. Second, Native American (up to 15.44%) and Black (up to 11.53%) children were at far higher risk of placement. Foster care is thus quite common in the U.S., especially for historically disadvantaged racial/ethnic groups. Third, differences in foster care placement were minimal between the sexes, indicating that the high risks of foster care placement are shared almost equally by boys and girls.