Focus on the family
Testicular volume is inversely correlated with nurturing-related brain activity in human fathers
Jennifer Mascaro, Patrick Hackett & James Rilling
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, forthcoming
Abstract:
Despite the well-documented benefits afforded the children of invested fathers in modern Western societies, some fathers choose not to invest in their children. Why do some men make this choice? Life History Theory offers an explanation for variation in parental investment by positing a trade-off between mating and parenting effort, which may explain some of the observed variance in human fathers’ parenting behavior. We tested this hypothesis by measuring aspects of reproductive biology related to mating effort, as well as paternal nurturing behavior and the brain activity related to it. Both plasma testosterone levels and testes volume were independently inversely correlated with paternal caregiving. In response to viewing pictures of one’s own child, activity in the ventral tegmental area — a key component of the mesolimbic dopamine reward and motivation system — predicted paternal caregiving and was negatively related to testes volume. Our results suggest that the biology of human males reflects a trade-off between mating effort and parenting effort, as indexed by testicular size and nurturing-related brain function, respectively.
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Gordon Dahl, Andreas Ravndal Kostol & Magne Mogstad
NBER Working Paper, July 2013
Abstract:
Strong intergenerational correlations in various types of welfare use have fueled a long standing debate over whether welfare dependency in one generation causes welfare dependency in the next generation. Some claim a culture has developed in which welfare use reinforces itself through the family, because parents on welfare provide information about the program to their children, reduce the stigma of participation, or invest differentially in child development. Others argue the determinants of poverty or poor health are correlated across generations, so that children's welfare participation is associated with, but not caused by, parental welfare use. However, there is little empirical evidence to sort out these claims. In this paper, we investigate the existence and importance of family welfare cultures in the context of Norway's disability insurance (DI) system. To overcome the challenge of correlated unobservables across generations, we take advantage of random assignment of judges to DI applicants whose cases are initially denied. Some appeal judges are systematically more lenient, which leads to random variation in the probability a parent will be allowed DI. Using this exogenous variation, we find strong evidence that welfare use in one generation causes welfare use in the next generation: when a parent is allowed DI, their adult child's participation over the next five years increases by 6 percentage points. This effect grows over time, rising to 12 percentage points after ten years. Using our estimates, we simulate the total reduction in DI participation from a policy which makes the screening process more stringent; the intergenerational link amplifies the direct effect on parents at the margin of program entry, leading to long-run participation rates and program costs which are substantially lower than would otherwise be expected. The detailed nature of our data allows us to explore the mechanisms behind the causal intergenerational relationship; we find suggestive evidence against stigma and parental investments and in favor of children learning from a parent's experience with the DI program.
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Childhood adversity as a risk for cancer: Findings from the 1958 British birth cohort study
Michelle Kelly-Irving et al.
BMC Public Health, August 2013
Background: To analyse whether Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) are associated with an increased risk of cancer.
Methods: The National child development study (NCDS) is a prospective birth cohort study with data collected over 50 years. The NCDS included all live births during one week in 1958 (n = 18558) in Great Britain. Self-reported cancer incidence was based on 444 participants reporting having had cancer at some point and 5694 reporting never having cancer. ACE was measured using reports of: 1) child in care, 2) physical neglect, 3) child’s or family’s contact with the prison service, 4) parental separation due to divorce, death or other, 5) family experience of mental illness & 6) family experience of substance abuse. The resulting variable had three categories, no ACEs/ one ACE/ 2 + ACEs and was used to test for a relationship with cancer. Information on socioeconomic characteristics, pregnancy and birth were extracted as potential confounders. Information on adult health behaviours, socioeconomic environment, psychological state and age at first pregnancy were added to the models. Multivariate models were run using multiply-imputed data to account for missing data in the cohort.
Results: The odds of having a cancer before 50 y among women increased twofold for those who had 2+ ACEs versus those with no ACEs, after adjusting for adult factors and early life confounders (OR: 2.1, 95% CI: 1.42-3.21, p < 0.001).
Conclusion: These findings suggest that cancer risk may be influenced by exposure to stressful conditions and events early on in life. This is potentially important in furthering our understanding of cancer aetiology, and consequently in redirecting scientific research and developing appropriate prevention policies.
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Barbara Oudekerk et al.
Journal of Early Adolescence, forthcoming
Abstract:
Maternal and paternal psychological control, peer attitudes, and the interaction of psychological control and peer attitudes at age 13 were examined as predictors of risky sexual behavior before age 16 in a community sample of 181 youth followed from age 13 to 16. Maternal psychological control moderated the link between peer attitudes and sexual behavior. Peer acceptance of early sex predicted greater risky sexual behaviors, but only for teens whose mothers engaged in high levels of psychological control. Paternal psychological control demonstrated the same moderating effect for girls; for boys, however, high levels of paternal control predicted risky sex regardless of peer attitudes. Results are consistent with the theory that peer influences do not replace parental influences with regard to adolescent sexual behavior; rather, parental practices continue to serve an important role either directly forecasting sexual behavior or moderating the link between peer attitudes and sexual behavior.
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The Great Recession, genetic sensitivity, and maternal harsh parenting
Dohoon Lee et al.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 20 August 2013, Pages 13780-13784
Abstract:
Using data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, this study examined the effects of the Great Recession on maternal harsh parenting. We found that changes in macroeconomic conditions, rather than current conditions, affected harsh parenting, that declines in macroeconomic conditions had a stronger impact on harsh parenting than improvements in conditions, and that mothers’ responses to adverse economic conditions were moderated by the DRD2 Taq1A genotype. We found no evidence of a moderating effect for two other, less well-studied SNPs from the DRD4 and DAT1 genes.
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The Effect of Maternal Employment on Children's Academic Performance
Rachel Dunifon et al.
NBER Working Paper, August 2013
Abstract:
Using a Danish data set that follows 135,000 Danish children from birth through 9th grade, we examine the effect of maternal employment during a child’s first three and first 15 years on that child’s grade point average in 9th grade. We address the endogeneity of employment by including a rich set of household control variables, instrumenting for employment with the gender- and education-specific local unemployment rate, and by including maternal fixed effects. We find that maternal employment has a positive effect on children’s academic performance in all specifications, particularly when women work part-time. This is in contrast with the larger literature on maternal employment, much of which takes place in other contexts, and which finds no or a small negative effect of maternal employment on children’s cognitive development and academic performance.
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Naomi Spence, Kathryn Henderson & Glen Elder
Journal of Family Issues, September 2013, Pages 1194-1216
Abstract:
This article investigates the link between adolescent family structure and the likelihood of military enlistment in young adulthood as compared with alternative post–high school activities. The authors use data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health and multinomial logistic regression analyses to compare the odds of military enlistment with college attendance or labor force involvement. They find that alternative family structures predict enlistment relative to college attendance. Living in a single-parent household during adolescence increased odds of military enlistment, but the effect is accounted for by socioeconomic status and early feelings of social isolation. Living with a stepparent or with neither biological parent more than doubles the odds of enlistment, independent of socioeconomic status, characteristics of parent–child relationships, or feelings of social isolation. Although college attendance is widely promoted as a valued post–high school activity, military service may offer a route to independence and a greater sense of belonging.
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Patrick Davies & Dante Cicchetti
Child Development, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study tested the 5-HTTLPR gene as a moderator in the relation between maternal unresponsiveness and child externalizing symptoms in a disadvantaged, predominantly Black sample of two hundred and one 2-year-old children and their mothers. Using a multimethod, prospective design, structural equation model analyses indicated that maternal unresponsiveness significantly predicted increases in externalizing symptoms 2 years later only for children possessing the LL genotype. Moderation was expressed in a “for better” or “for worse” form hypothesized in differential susceptibility theory. In examining why the risk posed by maternal unresponsiveness differed across the 5-HTTLPR polymorphism, mediated moderation analyses showed that children's angry reactivity to maternal negativity partly accounted for the greater susceptibility of homozygous L carriers to variations in maternal unresponsiveness.
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Maternal Multipartnered Fertility and Adolescent Well-being
Cassandra Dorius & Karen Guzzo
University of Michigan Working Paper, August 2013
Abstract:
Over the past decade, there has been an emerging body of research focusing on multipartnered fertility, where a parent has children by more than one partner. The growth in union dissolution and nonmarital childbearing has increased the prevalence of multipartnered fertility, altered the circumstances in which it occurred, and fostered concern over the implications for families, particularly children .However, it is not clear if concern over multipartnered fertility, in and of itself, is warranted. We draw on 24 waves (1979-2010) of nationally representative data from the 1979 National Longitudinal Study of Youth main youth interviews to create detailed relationship histories of mothers and then link these data to self-reported assessments of adolescent well-being found in 9 waves (1994-2010) of the young adult (NLSY79-YA) supplement. Preliminary OLS and Logit regression models suggest that maternal multipartnered fertility has a significant direct and moderating effect on adolescent drug use and sexual debut net of cumulative family instability and exposure to particular family forms like marriage, cohabitation, and divorce. Moreover, maternal multipartnered fertility remained a significant predictor of both drug use and the timing of first sex even after accounting for selection into this family form and controlling for the adolescent’s experience of poverty, unemployment, and educational disadvantage at the time of birth and throughout childhood.
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Is Resource Dilution a Law? Sibship Size and Educational Outcomes Across Time and Group
Douglas Downey, Benjamin Gibbs & Joseph Workman
Ohio State University Working Paper, August 2013
Abstract:
One of the most consistent patterns in the social sciences is the relationship between sibship size and educational outcomes: those with fewer siblings outperform those with many. The most prominent explanation for this pattern is resource dilution — parents’ resources are finite and spread more thinly as the number of children in the family increases. This theoretical claim is provocative because it transcends place and time, suggesting a universal law. Studies beyond the United States, however, indicate another possibility — that the relationship between sibship size and educational outcomes may depend on context. With a focus on historical and contextual patterns in the U.S. setting, we extend tests of the dilution model in two ways with data from the General Social Surveys 1972-2010. First, we find that the effect of sibship size on educational outcomes has slowly declined during the twentieth century, but has also shown signs of uptick among the most recent cohorts, a pattern that resembles the broader patterns of inequality exhibited in Kuznets Curve. Second, large sibships are less detrimental among individuals that identify as Mormon than for other religious groups, highlighting the way in which broader social norms influence the consequences of sibship size.
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Authoritarianism, Anger, and Hostile Attribution Bias: A Test of Affect Displacement
Michael Milburn, Miho Niwa & Marcus Patterson
Political Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Past research has supported the hypothesis that the relationship between harsh childhood punishment and adult political attitudes is due to the displacement of negative emotions that arise onto punitive public policies, e.g., support for the death penalty (Milburn, Conrad, Sala, & Carberry, 1995). Cognitions associated with childhood punishment may also impact adult political attitudes, yet their effects have not yet been examined, despite research that shows that punitive childhood experiences increase the tendency to attribute hostility to others. Thus, we investigated whether the tendency to make hostile attributions about others' behavior influences a person's authoritarianism, controlling for their parents' political orientation. Respondents completed an online survey concerning their childhood punishment experiences, their parents' political orientation, their trait anger, their level of hostile attribution bias (HAB), and their authoritarianism. Multiple regression analyses and structural equation modeling (SEM) found that higher childhood punishment has a significant direct effect on higher levels of authoritarianism, even after controlling for parents' political orientation, and that trait anger and HAB appear to mediate the effects of childhood punishment experiences on authoritarianism. These results support the process of affect displacement as an important influence on adult punitiveness and political orientation.
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Mitigating the Effects of Low Birth Weight: Evidence from Quasi-Randomly Assigned Adoptees
Brian Beach & Martin Hugo Saavedra
University of Pittsburgh Working Paper, August 2013
Abstract:
Infants who are underweight at birth earn less, score lower on tests, and become less educated as adults. Does socioeconomic status mitigate these effects? Previous studies have found mixed results, but they also differed in how they measure socioeconomic status. In this paper, we reconcile these findings using a unique data-set in which adoptees were quasi-randomly assigned to families. This data-set allows us to use five prevalent measures of socioeconomic status: mother’s education, father’s education, family income, family size, and neighborhood income. We find that zip code income mitigates the effects of low birth weight, as in Currie and Morreti (2007), whereas other family characteristics do not, as in Currie and Hyson (1999) and Black et al (2007).
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Evidence of a nesting psychology during human pregnancy
Marla Anderson & M.D. Rutherford
Evolution and Human Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
In altricial mammals, “nesting” refers to a suite of primarily maternal behaviours including nest-site selection, nest building and nest defense, and the many ways that nonhuman animals prepare themselves for parturition are well studied. In contrast, little research has considered pre-parturient preparation behaviours in women from a functional perspective. Reports in the popular press assert that women experience “nesting” urges, in the form of cleaning and organizing behaviours. Anthropological data suggest that having control over the environment is a key feature of childbirth preparation in humans, including decisions about where birth will take place, and who will be welcome in the birthing environment. Here, we describe the results of two studies, a large online study comparing pregnant and non-pregnant women, and a longitudinal study tracking women throughout pregnancy and into the postpartum period and comparing non-pregnant women at similar time intervals, using a nesting questionnaire that we developed. We found that women exhibit nesting behaviours, including space preparation and social selectivity, which peak in the third trimester of pregnancy. As is the case with nonhuman mammals, nesting in women may serve a protective function.
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Family Structure and the Economic Wellbeing of Children in Youth and Adulthood
Leonard Lopoo & Thomas DeLeire
Social Science Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
An extensive literature on the relationship between family structure and children’s outcomes consistently shows that living with a single parent is associated with negative outcomes. Few U.S. studies, however, examine how a child’s family structure affects outcomes for the child once he/she reaches adulthood. We directly examine, using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, whether family structure during childhood is related to the child’s economic wellbeing both during childhood as well as during adulthood. We find that living with a single parent is associated with the level of family resources available during childhood. This finding persists even when we remove time invariant factors within families. We also show that the family structure is related to the child’s education, marital status, and adult family income. Once we control for the child’s demography and economic wellbeing in childhood, however, the associations into adulthood become trivial in size and statistically insignificant, suggesting that the relationship between family structure and children’s long-term, economic outcomes is due in large part to the relationship between family structure and economic wellbeing in childhood.
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School Calendars, Child Care Availability and Maternal Employment
Jennifer Graves
Journal of Urban Economics, November 2013, Pages 57–70
Abstract:
A year-round calendar redistributes schools days around the year. This paper studies how this redistribution of school days, and therefore child care days available through school, affects maternal employment. The presence of year-round calendars in a district could be correlated with other district level attributes that might affect female employment rates. I therefore use a differencing method that compares the influence of district year-round enrollment on the employment rates of women with school-aged children relative to women whose eldest child is pre-school-aged. Unobserved district factors should affect employment rates of women with school-aged and pre-school-aged children similarly, yet only women with school-aged children should be directly impacted by school calendar. I find that redistributing child care days available through school into shorter intervals over time negatively impacts maternal employment. Among those women with school-aged children, those also having pre-school-aged children have the hardest time adjusting to differences in existing availability.
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Associations between Parenting Style, Physical Discipline, and Adjustment in Adolescents' Reports
Marjorie Lindner Gunnoe
Psychological Reports, June 2013, Pages 933-975
Abstract:
Recollections of physical discipline as absent, age-delimited (ages 2–11), or present into adolescence were associated with youths' evaluations of their mothers' and fathers' parenting styles and their own adjustment. Data were from the Portraits of American Life Study–Youth (PALS–Y) a diverse, national sample of 13- to 18-year-olds (N = 158). The modal experience of youth with authoritative parents was age-delimited spanking; the modal experience of youth with permissive parents was no spanking; the modal experience of youth with authoritarian or disengaged parents was physical discipline into adolescence. The age-delimited group reported the best adjustment (less maladjustment than the adolescent group; greater competence than both other groups). The positive association between fathers' age-delimited spanking and youths' academic rank persisted even after accounting for parenting styles. The eschewing of spanking should not be listed as a distinguishing characteristic of authoritative parenting, which was more often associated with age-delimited spanking than with zero-usage.
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The Impact of Parental Death on Child Well-being: Evidence from the Indian Ocean Tsunami
Ava Cas et al.
NBER Working Paper, August 2013
Abstract:
Identifying the impact of parental death on the well-being of children is complicated because parental death is likely to be correlated with other, unobserved, factors that affect child well-being. Population-representative longitudinal data collected in Aceh, Indonesia, before and after the December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami are used to identify the impact of parental deaths on the well-being of children who were age 9 through 17 years old at the time of the tsunami. Exploiting the unanticipated nature of parental death due to the tsunami in combination with measuring well-being of the same children before and after the tsunami, models that include child fixed effects are estimated to isolate the causal effect of parental death. Comparisons are drawn between those children who lost one parent, both parents and those whose parents survived. Shorter-term impacts on school attendance and time allocation a year after the tsunami are examined as well as longer-term impacts on education trajectories and marriage. Shorter- and longer-term impacts are not the same. Five years after the tsunami, there are substantial deleterious impacts of the tsunami on older boys and girls whereas the effects on younger children are more muted.
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Children, spousal love, and happiness: An economic analysis
Shoshana Grossbard & Sankar Mukhopadhyay
Review of Economics of the Household, September 2013, Pages 447-467
Abstract:
In this paper we examine how children affect happiness and relationships within a family by analyzing two unique questions in the National Longitudinal Study of Youth’s 1997 cohort. We find that (a) presence of children is associated with a loss of spousal love; (b) loss of spousal love is associated with loss of overall happiness; but (c) presence of children is not associated with significant loss of overall happiness. If children reduce feelings of being loved by the spouse but do not reduce reported happiness even though spousal love induces happiness, then it must be the case that children contribute to parental happiness by providing other benefits. After ruling out some competing compensation mechanisms we infer that loss of spousal love is compensated with altruistic feelings towards children.
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Risk of Suicide Attempt in Adopted and Nonadopted Offspring
Margaret Keyes et al.
Pediatrics, forthcoming
Objecitve: We asked whether adoption status represented a risk of suicide attempt for adopted and nonadopted offspring living in the United States. We also examined whether factors known to be associated with suicidal behavior would mediate the relationship between adoption status and suicide attempt.
Methods: Participants were drawn from the Sibling Interaction and Behavior Study, which included 692 adopted and 540 nonadopted offspring and was conducted at the University of Minnesota from 1998 to 2008. Adoptees were systematically ascertained from records of 3 large Minnesota adoption agencies; nonadoptees were ascertained from Minnesota birth records. Outcome measures were attempted suicide, reported by parent or offspring, and factors known to be associated with suicidal behavior including psychiatric disorder symptoms, personality traits, family environment, and academic disengagement.
Results: The odds of a reported suicide attempt were ∼4 times greater in adoptees compared with nonadoptees (odds ratio: 4.23). After adjustment for factors associated with suicidal behavior, the odds of reporting a suicide attempt were reduced but remained significantly elevated (odds ratio: 3.70).
Conclusions: The odds for reported suicide attempt are elevated in individuals who are adopted relative to those who are not adopted. The relationship between adoption status and suicide attempt is partially mediated by factors known to be associated with suicidal behavior. Continued study of the risk of suicide attempt in adopted offspring may inform the larger investigation of suicidality in all adolescents and young adults.
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Ming-Te Wang & Sarah Kenny
Child Development, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study used cross-lagged modeling to examine reciprocal relations between maternal and paternal harsh verbal discipline and adolescents’ conduct problems and depressive symptoms. Data were from a sample of 976 two-parent families and their children (51% males; 54% European American, 40% African American). Mothers’ and fathers’ harsh verbal discipline at age 13 predicted an increase in adolescent conduct problems and depressive symptoms between ages 13 and 14. A child effect was also present, with adolescent misconduct at age 13 predicting increases in mothers’ and fathers’ harsh verbal discipline between ages 13 and 14. Furthermore, maternal and paternal warmth did not moderate the longitudinal associations between mothers’ and fathers’ use of harsh verbal discipline and adolescent conduct problems and depressive symptoms.
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Early life stressors and suicidal ideation: Mediation by interpersonal risk factors
Megan Puzia et al.
Personality and Individual Differences, forthcoming
Abstract:
Childhood abuse is a major public health concern that has been consistently associated with many deleterious outcomes, including suicidal ideation (SI) and behavior. The processes through which early abuse experiences confer risk for suicidality are unclear. Drawing on Joiner’s (2005) interpersonal theory of suicide, we hypothesized that the relationship between SI and childhood abuse would be specific to childhood emotional abuse, and that this relationship would be mediated by thwarted belongingness and perceived burdensomeness. Participants (n = 189) with moderate to severe childhood abuse completed measures of childhood abuse, perceived burdensomeness, and lack of belongingness at the baseline assessment, and a measure of SI at a 7-week follow-up assessment. We found partial support for the study hypotheses. Childhood emotional abuse, but not childhood physical or sexual abuse, was found to be prospectively associated with SI. Perceived burdensomeness but not thwarted belongingness mediated this relationship. These findings suggest that the relationship between SI and childhood abuse may be specific to emotional abuse, and that this abuse subtype confers risk for ideation through increasing the individual’s sense of hindering or burdening to others within the social network. Implications of these findings are discussed.
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Early deprivation impairs the development of balance and bilateral coordination
Barbara Roeber, Megan Gunnar & Seth Pollak
Developmental Psychobiology, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study examined balance and bilateral coordination skills in a sample of internationally adopted, post-institutionalized (PI) children. We compared the performance of these PI children to two age-matched groups. One was a group of children who were internationally adopted from foster care (FC). The second group consisted of non-adopted children being raised in their birth families, who served as controls (Control). Both PI and FC children scored lower than control children on balance, while PI children scored lower than both FC and control children on bilateral coordination. These results suggest that aspects of institutional rearing impact the development of bilateral coordination, while factors common to internationally adopted children other than institutionalization impact the development of balance. Region of birth (Asia, Latin/South America, Russia/Eastern Europe) did not moderate associations between institutional duration and bilateral coordination.
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Early developmental emergence of human amygdala–prefrontal connectivity after maternal deprivation
Dylan Gee et al.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, forthcoming
Abstract:
Under typical conditions, medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) connections with the amygdala are immature during childhood and become adult-like during adolescence. Rodent models show that maternal deprivation accelerates this development, prompting examination of human amygdala–mPFC phenotypes following maternal deprivation. Previously institutionalized youths, who experienced early maternal deprivation, exhibited atypical amygdala–mPFC connectivity. Specifically, unlike the immature connectivity (positive amygdala–mPFC coupling) of comparison children, children with a history of early adversity evidenced mature connectivity (negative amygdala–mPFC coupling) and thus, resembled the adolescent phenotype. This connectivity pattern was mediated by the hormone cortisol, suggesting that stress-induced modifications of the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis shape amygdala–mPFC circuitry. Despite being age-atypical, negative amygdala–mPFC coupling conferred some degree of reduced anxiety, although anxiety was still significantly higher in the previously institutionalized group. These findings suggest that accelerated amygdala–mPFC development is an ontogenetic adaptation in response to early adversity.
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Do Socialization Goals Explain Differences in Parental Control Between Black and White Parents?
Scott Richman & Jelani Mandara
Family Relations, October 2013, Pages 625–636
Abstract:
African American and White parents differ in their use of parental control strategies. This study examined the degree to which these differences are related to socialization goals or socioeconomic factors. Using a sample of 320 parents, the authors found that socialization goals for child independence, cultural connection and respect for elders (i.e., cultural-filial piety), and financial success explained most of the ethnic differences in parental strictness. Ethnic differences in autonomy granting were more related to economic factors. It was concluded that African American parents scoring higher on measures of strictness than White parents is related to having different socialization goals and cultural beliefs about child obedience and respect for elders. However, African American parents seem to provide less autonomy than White parents, perhaps due to sociocontextual factors such as greater neighborhood dangers.
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Wibke Jonas et al.
Genes, Brain and Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Mothers vary in duration of breastfeeding. These individual differences are related to a variety of demographic and individual maternal factors including maternal hormones, mood and early experiences. However, little is known about the role of genetic factors. We studied single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the OXT peptide gene (rs2740210; rs4813627) and the OXT receptor gene (OXTR rs237885) in two samples of mothers from the Maternal adversity, Vulnerability and Neurodevelopment study (MAVAN), a multicenter (Hamilton and Montreal, Canada) study following mothers and their children from pregnancy until 7 years of age. Data from the Hamilton site was the primary sample (n = 201) and data from Montreal the replication sample (n = 151). Breastfeeding duration, maternal mood (measured by the CES-D scale) and early life adversity (measured by the CTQ scale) were established during 12 months postpartum. In our primary sample, polymorphisms in OXT rs2740210, but not the other SNPs, interacted with early life adversity to predict variation in breastfeeding duration (overall F (8,125) = 2.361, p = .021; interaction effect b = -8.12, t = -2.3, p = .023) and depression (overall F(8, 118) = 5.751, p ≤ .001; interaction effect b = 6.06, t = 3.13, p = .002). A moderated mediation model showed that higher levels of depression mediated the inverse relation of high levels of early life adversity to breastfeeding duration, but only in women possessing the CC genotype (effect a’ = -3.3401, 95%CI=-7.9466 to -.0015) of the OXT SNP and not in women with the AA/AC genotype (a’ = -1.2942, ns). The latter findings (moderated mediation model) were replicated in our Montreal sample (a’ = -.277, 95%CI=-.7987 to -.0348 for CC; a’ = -.1820, ns, for AA/AC).
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Jan Saarela, Fjalar Finnäs & Mikael Rostila
Journal of Family Issues, October 2013, Pages 1317-1334
Abstract:
Using multigenerational population register data that cover the total Swedish population, we studied relative mortality of offspring whose parents had formed a new family with children. These primarily adult-age children are found to have lower death risks than those with divorced parents who did not form a new family, which highlights that the link between parental family formation and offspring health may be attributed not only to causal factors associated with family disruption but also to social selection in parents. The association differs notably according to whether sibling groups are determined according to the mother or the father. This finding is interpreted as reflecting varying environmental exposure, because most minor children who experience parental divorce remain with the mother. We approximate that parental social selection, which maliciously affects offspring health, raises the offspring mortality risk by 20%.
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Infant interest in their mother's face is associated with maternal psychological health
Rebecca Jones et al.
Infant Behavior and Development, December 2013, Pages 686–693
Abstract:
Early experience can alter infants’ interest in faces in their environment. This study investigated the relationship between maternal psychological health, mother–infant bonding, and infant face interest in a community sample. A visual habituation paradigm was used to independently assess 3.5-month old infants’ attention to a photograph of their mother's face and a stranger's face. In this sample of 54 healthy mother–infant pairs, 57% of mothers (N = 31) reported symptoms of at least one of stress response to trauma, anxiety, or depression. Interest in the mother-face, but not stranger-face, was positively associated with the mother's psychological health. In regression analyses, anxiety and depression predicted 9% of the variance in looking to the mother-face. Anxiety was the only significant predictor within the model. No direct associations were found between mother–infant bonding and infants’ face interest. Taken together, these findings indicate that infant's visual engagement with their mother's face varies with maternal symptoms of emotional distress, even within a community sample.
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Former Foster Youth as Fathers: Risk and Protective Factors Predicting Father–Child Contact
Jennifer Hook & Mark Courtney
Family Relations, October 2013, Pages 571–583
Abstract:
This study uses longitudinal data from the Midwest Evaluation of the Adult Functioning of Former Foster Youth to examine father–child contact between fathers who aged out of foster care and their children (N = 287 children of 150 fathers). The authors examine the effect of remaining in foster care after age 18 and find that it is positively associated with father–child contact when fathers are age 26. Some of this relationship is explained by positive associations between remaining in care, employment, and men's coresidence with the child's mother, and a negative association with criminal conviction. Even among involved fathers, however, criminal convictions and unemployment are common. Findings suggest that extending care from age 18 to 21 benefits young men, and their children, when they become fathers. Child welfare policies and practice should attend to the needs of young men who become fathers, before and after they exit care.
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Early Life Stress and Physical and Psychosocial Functioning in Late Adulthood
Hanna Alastalo et al.
PLoS ONE, July 2013
Background: Severe stress experienced in early life may have long-term effects on adult physiological and psychological health and well-being. We studied physical and psychosocial functioning in late adulthood in subjects separated temporarily from their parents in childhood during World War II.
Methods: The 1803 participants belong to the Helsinki Birth Cohort Study, born 1934–44. Of them, 267 (14.8%) had been evacuated abroad in childhood during WWII and the remaining subjects served as controls. Physical and psychosocial functioning was assessed with the Short Form 36 scale (SF-36) between 2001 and 2004. A test for trends was based on linear regression. All analyses were adjusted for age at clinical examination, social class in childhood and adulthood, smoking, alcohol intake, physical activity, body mass index, cardiovascular disease and diabetes.
Results: Physical functioning in late adulthood was lower among the separated men compared to non-separated men (b = −0.40, 95% confidence interval [95% CI]: −0.71 to −0.08). Those men separated in school age (>7 years) and who were separated for a duration over 2 years had the highest risk for lower physical functioning (b = −0.89, 95% CI: −1.58 to −0.20) and (b = −0.65, 95% CI: −1.25 to −0.05), respectively). Men separated for a duration over 2 years also had lower psychosocial functioning (b = −0.70, 95% CI: −1.35 to −0.06). These differences in physical and psychosocial functioning were not observed among women.
Conclusion: Early life stress may increase the risk for impaired physical functioning in late adulthood among men. Timing and duration of the separation influenced the physical and psychosocial functioning in late adulthood.
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Melissa Barnett & Laura Scaramella
Journal of Family Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Sex differences in rates of behavior problems, including internalizing and externalizing problems, begin to emerge during early childhood. These sex differences may occur because mothers parent their sons and daughters differently, or because the impact of parenting on behavior problems is different for boys and girls. In this study, we examined whether associations between observations of mothers’ positive and negative parenting and children’s externalizing and internalizing behaviors vary as a function of child sex. The sample consisted of 137 African American low-income families with one sibling approximately 2 years old and the closest-aged older sibling who was approximately 4 years old. Results from fixed-effects within-family models indicate clear sex differences regardless of child age. Mothers were observed to use less positive parenting with sons than with daughters. Higher levels of observed negative parenting were linked to more externalizing behaviors for boys, whereas lower levels of positive parenting were linked to more externalizing behaviors for girls. No child sex differences emerged regarding associations between observed positive and negative parenting and internalizing behaviors.
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Is volunteer labor part of household production? Evidence from married couples
Eleanor Brown & Ye Zhang
Review of Economics of the Household, September 2013, Pages 341-369
Abstract:
Volunteer labor is generally modeled as an individualistic pursuit, akin to leisure or to human capital accumulation. Some activities labeled as volunteering, however, may be more usefully thought of as quid pro quo time commitments that are part of securing services for family members. Parents are frequently expected to volunteer, for example, when their children participate in youth sports leagues or school marching bands. In such cases, volunteering is essentially an instance of household production undertaken outside the home. Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we divide volunteering into three categories — youth-related, religious, and non-youth-related secular — according to the likelihood that an instance of volunteering in the category represents household production. We find evidence that husbands and wives respond to one another’s time pressures such that youth-related volunteering looks like a task for which husbands’ and wives’ time inputs substitute for one another. Further, we find this pattern for housework, and not for other forms of volunteering. An increase in either spouse’s hours of market work will significantly reduce that spouse’s likelihood of volunteering for youth-related activities while raising the partner’s likelihood of volunteering. A similar pattern holds for hours volunteered to youth-related activities, with the wife’s responses achieving statistical significance.
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Correlations of Media Habits Across Time, Generations, and Media Modalities
Grace Yang & Rowell Huesmann
Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, Summer 2013, Pages 356-373
Abstract:
This study investigates media uses and preferences across two generations and across television and video games. Path analyses using data from 335 families show that the number of hours of television viewed by the first generation (parents at age 30) positively predicts the amount of television use by their offspring in the second generation 18 years later, as well as their own amount of television viewing at that time. The analyses also show that the amount of video game playing among offspring is significantly related to their own as well as their parents' concurrent TV use. While there is no similar longitudinal correlation between a preference for violent television by parents at age 30 and that of their offspring 18 years later, parents' violent television preferences at age 48 are positively correlated with their offspring's concurrent preference for violent television content. Additionally, the violent television preferences of offspring are positively correlated with their own preferences for violent video games. These effects were found while controlling for SES, intellectual achievement, and offspring gender. These results suggest that the amount of time devoted to media use and preferences for violent media generalize across media modalities and are transmitted across generations.
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The evolved development niche: Longitudinal effects of caregiving practices on early childhood psychosocial development
Darcia Narvaez et al.
Early Childhood Research Quarterly, Fall 2013, Pages 759–773
Abstract:
Using an evolutionary developmental systems approach, we examined the effects of early care on children's psychosocial development. Our framework for early care is the set of parenting practices that emerged with the catarrhine mammals more than 30 million years ago, which were slightly altered in what we call the evolved developmental niche (EDN). Using an existing dataset of 682 families, we assessed four characteristics of EDN care — maternal responsivity, breastfeeding, touch, and maternal social support — and examined their effects longitudinally (prenatal to age 3) on children's prosociality (cooperation and social engagement), behavior problems (internalizing/externalizing), and cognitive ability (intelligence, auditory comprehension, and verbal expression) over three years. The EDN variables significantly and differentially affected child outcomes at different time points, even after controlling for maternal education, age, and income-to-needs ratio. Most significant findings were also retained when maternal responsivity was controlled. In summary, EDN-consistent behaviors in infancy provide necessary support for positive social and cognitive development in early childhood.
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Kate Kuhlman, Sheryl Olson & Nestor Lopez-Duran
Developmental Psychobiology, forthcoming
Abstract:
In this study, we examined whether parenting and HPA-axis reactivity during middle childhood predicted increases in internalizing symptoms during the transition to adolescence, and whether HPA-axis reactivity mediated the impact of parenting on internalizing symptoms. The study included 65 children (35 boys) who were assessed at age 5, 7, and 11. Parenting behaviors were assessed via parent report at age 5 and 11. The child's HPA-axis reactivity was measured at age 7 via a stress task. Internalizing symptoms were measured via teacher reports at age 5 and 11. High maternal warmth at age 5 predicted lower internalizing symptoms at age 11. Also, high reported maternal warmth and induction predicted lower HPA-axis reactivity. Additionally, greater HPA-axis reactivity at age 7 was associated with greater increases in internalizing symptoms from age 5 to 11. Finally, the association between age 5 maternal warmth and age 11 internalizing symptoms was partially mediated by lower cortisol in response to the stress task. Thus, parenting behaviors in early development may influence the physiological stress response system and therefore buffer the development of internalizing symptoms during preadolescence when risk for disorder onset is high.
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Early childhood television viewing and kindergarten entry readiness
Linda Pagani, Caroline Fitzpatrick & Tracie Barnett
Pediatric Research, September 2013, Pages 350–355
Background: Using a large population-based sample, this study aims to verify whether televiewing at 29 mo, a common early childhood pastime, is prospectively associated with school readiness at 65 mo.
Methods: Participants are a prospective longitudinal cohort of 991 girls and 1,006 boys from the Quebec Longitudinal Study of Child Development with parent-reported data on weekly hours of televiewing at 29 mo of age. We conducted a series of ordinary least-squares regressions in which children’s scores on direct child assessments of vocabulary, mathematical knowledge, and motor skills, as well as kindergarten teacher reports of socioemotional functioning, were linearly regressed on early televiewing.
Results: Every SD increase (1.2 h) in daily televiewing at 29 mo predicted decreases in receptive vocabulary, number knowledge scores, classroom engagement, and gross motor locomotion scores, as well as increases in the frequency of victimization by classmates.
Conclusion: Increases in total time watching television at 29 mo were associated with subsequent decreases in vocabulary and math skills, classroom engagement (which is largely determined by attention skills), victimization by classmates, and physical prowess at kindergarten. These prospective associations, independent of key potential confounders, suggest the need for better parental awareness and compliance with existing viewing recommendations put forth by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP).