Meet the parents
Breast feeding and intergenerational social mobility: What are the mechanisms?
A. Sacker et al.
Archives of Disease in Childhood, forthcoming
Objective: To investigate the association between breast feeding and intergenerational social mobility and the possible mediating role of neurological and stress mechanisms.
Setting: Longitudinal study of individuals born in Britain during 1 week in 1958 and 1970.
Participants: 17 419 individuals participated in the 1958 cohort and 16 771 in the 1970 cohort. The effect of breast feeding on intergenerational social mobility from age 10/11 to age 33/34 was analysed after multiple imputations to fill in missing data and propensity score matching on a wide range of confounders measured in childhood (1958 cohort N=16 039-16 154; 1970 cohort N=16 255-16 361).
Main outcome measures: Own Registrar General's Social Class (RGSC) at 33/34 years adjusted for father's RGSC at 10/11 years, gender and their interaction.
Results: Breastfed individuals were more likely to be upwardly mobile (1958 cohort: OR 1.24 95% CI 1.12 to 1.38; 1970 cohort: OR 1.24 95% CI 1.12 to 1.37) and less likely to be downwardly mobile (1958 cohort: OR 0.81 95% CI 0.73 to 0.90; 1970 cohort: OR 0.79 95% CI 0.71 to 0.88). In an ordinal regression model, markers of neurological development (cognitive test scores) and stress (emotional stress scores) accounted for approximately 36% of the relationship between breast feeding and social mobility.
Conclusions: Breast feeding increased the odds of upward social mobility and decreased the odds of downward mobility. Consistent with a causal explanation, the findings were robust to matching on a large number of observable variables and effect sizes were alike for two cohorts with different social distributions of breast feeding. The effect was mediated in part through neurological and stress mechanisms.
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Breastfeeding May Protect from Developing Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder
Aviva Mimouni-Bloch et al.
Breastfeeding Medicine, August 2013, Pages 363-367
Introduction: Breastfeeding has a positive influence on physical and mental development. Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a common neurobehavioral disorder with major social, familial, and academic influences. The present study aimed to evaluate whether ADHD is associated with a shorter duration of breastfeeding.
Subjects and Methods: In this retrospective matched study, children 6-12 years old diagnosed at Schneider's Children Medical Center (Petach Tikva, Israel) with ADHD between 2008 and 2009 were compared with two control groups. The first one consisted of healthy (no ADHD) siblings of ADHD children; the second control group consisted of children without ADHD who consulted at the otolaryngology clinic. A constructed questionnaire about demographic, medical, and perinatal findings, feeding history during the first year of life, and a validated adult ADHD screening questionnaire were given to both parents of every child in each group.
Results: In children later diagnosed as having ADHD, 43% were breastfed at 3 months of age compared with 69% in the siblings group and 73% in the control non-related group (p=0.002). By 6 months of age 29% of ADHD children were breastfed compared with 50% in the siblings group and 57% in the control non-related group (p=0.011). A stepwise logistic regression that included the variables found to be significant in univariate analysis demonstrated a significant association between ADHD and lack of breastfeeding at 3 months of age, maternal age at birth, male gender, and parental divorce.
Conclusions: Children with ADHD were less likely to breastfeed at 3 months and 6 months of age than children in the two control groups. We speculate that breastfeeding may have a protective effect from developing ADHD later in childhood.
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Mandy Belfort et al.
JAMA Pediatrics, forthcoming
Objectives: To examine relationships of breastfeeding duration and exclusivity with child cognition at ages 3 and 7 years and to evaluate the extent to which maternal fish intake during lactation modifies associations of infant feeding with later cognition.
Design, Setting, and Participants: Prospective cohort study (Project Viva), a US prebirth cohort that enrolled mothers from April 22, 1999, to July 31, 2002, and followed up children to age 7 years, including 1312 Project Viva mothers and children.
Main Outcomes and Measures: Child receptive language assessed with the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test at age 3 years, Wide Range Assessment of Visual Motor Abilities at ages 3 and 7 years, and Kaufman Brief Intelligence Test and Wide Range Assessment of Memory and Learning at age 7 years.
Results: Adjusting for sociodemographics, maternal intelligence, and home environment in linear regression, longer breastfeeding duration was associated with higher Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test score at age 3 years (0.21; 95% CI, 0.03-0.38 points per month breastfed) and with higher intelligence on the Kaufman Brief Intelligence Test at age 7 years (0.35; 0.16-0.53 verbal points per month breastfed; and 0.29; 0.05-0.54 nonverbal points per month breastfed). Breastfeeding duration was not associated with Wide Range Assessment of Memory and Learning scores. Beneficial effects of breastfeeding on the Wide Range Assessment of Visual Motor Abilities at age 3 years seemed greater for women who consumed 2 or more servings of fish per week (0.24; 0.00-0.47 points per month breastfed) compared with less than 2 servings of fish per week (-0.01; -0.22 to 0.20 points per month breastfed) (P = .16 for interaction).
Conclusions and Relevance: Our results support a causal relationship of breastfeeding duration with receptive language and verbal and nonverbal intelligence later in life.
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Paul Gertler et al.
NBER Working Paper, July 2013
Abstract:
We find large effects on the earnings of participants from a randomized intervention that gave psychosocial stimulation to stunted Jamaican toddlers living in poverty. The intervention consisted of one-hour weekly visits from community Jamaican health workers over a 2-year period that taught parenting skills and encouraged mothers to interact and play with their children in ways that would develop their children's cognitive and personality skills. We re-interviewed the study participants 20 years after the intervention. Stimulation increased the average earnings of participants by 42 percent. Treatment group earnings caught up to the earnings of a matched non-stunted comparison group. These findings show that psychosocial stimulation early in childhood in disadvantaged settings can have substantial effects on labor market outcomes and reduce later life inequality.
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Child Care Subsidies, Maternal Health, and Child-Parent Interactions: Evidence from Three Nationally Representative Datasets
Chris Herbst & Erdal Tekin
Health Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
A complete account of the US child care subsidy system requires an understanding of its implications for both parental and child well-being. Although the effects of child care subsidies on maternal employment and child development have been recently studied, many other dimensions of family well-being have received little attention. This paper attempts to fill this gap by examining the impact of child care subsidy receipt on maternal health and the quality of child-parent interactions. The empirical analyses use data from three nationally representative surveys, providing access to numerous measures of family well-being. In addition, we attempt to handle the possibility of non-random selection into subsidy receipt by using several identification strategies both within and across the surveys. Our results consistently indicate that child care subsidies are associated with worse maternal health and poorer interactions between parents and their children. In particular, subsidized mothers report lower levels of overall health and are more likely to show symptoms consistent with anxiety, depression, and parenting stress. Such mothers also reveal more psychological and physical aggression toward their children and are more likely to utilize spanking as a disciplinary tool. Together, these findings suggest that work-based public policies aimed at economically disadvantaged mothers may ultimately undermine family well-being.
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Intrahousehold Resource Allocation: Do Parents Reduce or Reinforce Child Ability Gaps?
Paul Frijters et al.
Demography, forthcoming
Abstract:
Do parents invest more or less in their high-ability children? We provide new evidence on this question by comparing observed ability differences and observed investment differences between siblings living in the United States. To overcome endogeneity issues, we use sibling differences in handedness as an instrument for cognitive ability differences. We find that parents invest more in high-ability children, with a 1 standard deviation increase in child cognitive ability increasing parental investments by approximately one-third of a standard deviation. Consequently, differences in child cognitive ability are enhanced by differential parental investments.
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Household Choice and Child Development
Daniela Del Boca, Christopher Flinn & Matthew Wiswall
Review of Economic Studies, forthcoming
Abstract:
The growth in labor market participation among women with young children has raised concerns about its implications for child cognitive development. We estimate a model of the cognitive development process of children nested within an otherwise standard model of household behavior. The household makes labor supply decisions and provides time and money inputs into the child quality production process during the development period. Our empirical results indicate that both parents' time inputs are important for the cognitive development of their children, particularly when the child is young. Money expenditures are less productive in terms of producing child quality. Comparative statics exercises demonstrate that cash transfers to households with children have small impacts on child quality due to the relatively low impact of money investments on child outcomes and the fact that a significant fraction of the transfer is spent on other household consumption and the leisure of the parents.
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Elise de La Rochebrochard & Heather Joshi
American Journal of Epidemiology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Children born after an unplanned pregnancy have poorer developmental scores. This could arise from less favorable parenting but also could reflect confounding from the socioeconomic circumstances. In a large representative sample in the United Kingdom, the Millennium Cohort Study (2001-2005), cognitive delay at 3 years was explored with the Bracken Assessment. Its association with unplanned pregnancy was studied in logistic models controlling for demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of the family, the child's characteristics, and parenting behavior. Stratification by the mother's educational level (grouped into 3 categories) was explored. Of 12,182 children included in the analysis, 41% were born after a pregnancy reported by the mother to have been a "surprise." Such unplanned pregnancies were associated in univariate analysis with more cognitive delay. Among mothers with a low or middle level of education, this association vanished when socioeconomic circumstances were controlled. Among mothers with a high level of education, the risk of cognitive delay remained significantly and unexplainedly raised after unplanned pregnancies, despite controlling for socioeconomic characteristics and parental behavior. In conclusion, for socially disadvantaged children, having resulted from an unplanned pregnancy does not seem to increase their already disproportionate risk of cognitive delay. Births after unplanned conceptions are mainly a symptom rather than a source of disadvantage.
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Harsh Physical Punishment in Childhood and Adult Physical Health
Tracie Afifi et al.
Pediatrics, August 2013, Pages e333 -e340
Background: The use of physical punishment is controversial. No studies have comprehensively examined the relationship between physical punishment and several physical health conditions in a nationally representative sample. The current study investigated possible associations between harsh physical punishment (ie, pushing, grabbing, shoving, slapping, and hitting) in the absence of more severe child maltreatment (ie, physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, physical neglect, emotional neglect, and exposure to intimate partner violence) and several physical health conditions.
Methods: Data were from the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions collected in 2004 and 2005 (n = 34 226 in the current analysis). The survey was conducted with a representative US adult population sample (20 years or older). Eight past year physical health condition categories were assessed. Models were adjusted for sociodemographic variables, family history of dysfunction, and Axis I and II mental disorders.
Results: Harsh physical punishment was associated with higher odds of cardiovascular disease (borderline significance), arthritis, and obesity after adjusting for sociodemographic variables, family history of dysfunction, and Axis I and II mental disorders (adjusted odds ratios ranged from 1.20 to 1.30).
Conclusions: Harsh physical punishment in the absence of child maltreatment is associated with some physical health conditions in a general population sample. These findings inform the ongoing debate around the use of physical punishment and provide evidence that harsh physical punishment independent of child maltreatment is associated with a higher likelihood of physical health conditions.
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A Big Brother: New Findings on How Low-Income Fathers Define Responsible Fatherhood
Monika Myers
Journal of Family and Economic Issues, September 2013, Pages 253-264
Abstract:
I interviewed 57 low-income fathers about how they define responsible fatherhood. Unlike findings from previous research, their definition did not include financial provision or daily caregiving. Instead, their definition included six dimensions, some of which resemble a "Big Brother": spending time in non-caregiving activities; avoiding harm by voluntarily distancing from the child when it is in the child's best interest; acknowledging paternity in non-legal forums; spending money on gifts, joint activities, and special needs; monitoring the child's home for trouble; and minimizing absences in the child's life. Because these fathers do not emphasize traditional breadwinning or primary caregiving, their responsible fathering beliefs and behavior may be unappreciated by academics, practitioners, and policy makers.
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Christopher Ferguson & Brent Donnellan
Developmental Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Zimmerman, Christakis, and Meltzoff (2007) reported that exposure to Baby Einstein videos was negatively associated with language development. The current study uses the Zimmerman et al. (2007) data set to replicate and extend the original analyses. Caregivers of 392 children aged 6 to 16 months and 358 children aged 17 to 27 months reported on media exposure, language development, and control variables related to child/parent interaction and demographic characteristics. Results indicated that exposure to baby videos could be construed as positive, neutral, or negative depending upon the statistical analysis. The effect size estimates were generally negligible across analyses. Exposure to educational programming tended to be positively related to language development. Infants exposed to no media actually had lower levels of language development compared to infants with some exposure. Given these results, the Zimmerman et al. (2007) data set does not permit strong inferences about a connection between exposure to media and language development in young children. These results also highlight recent concerns over methodological flexibility and the possibility of increased Type I errors (false positives) in the psychological literature.
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A. Asok et al.
Development and Psychopathology, August 2013, Pages 577-585
Abstract:
Early-life stress, such as maltreatment, institutionalization, and exposure to violence, is associated with accelerated telomere shortening. Telomere shortening may thus represent a biomarker of early adversity. Previous studies have suggested that responsive parenting may protect children from the negative biological and behavioral consequences of early adversity. This study examined the role of parental responsiveness in buffering children from telomere shortening following experiences of early-life stress. We found that high-risk children had significantly shorter telomeres than low-risk children, controlling for household income, birth weight, gender, and minority status. Further, parental responsiveness moderated the association between risk and telomere length, with more responsive parenting associated with longer telomeres only among high-risk children. These findings suggest that responsive parenting may have protective benefits on telomere shortening for young children exposed to early-life stress. Therefore, this study has important implications for early parenting interventions.
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Do Higher Child Care Subsidies Improve Parental Well-Being? Evidence from Quebec's Family Policies
Abel Brodeur & Marie Connolly
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, forthcoming
Abstract:
In this paper, we investigate the effect of a change in child care subsidies on parental subjective well-being. Starting in 1997, the Canadian province of Quebec implemented a generous program providing $5-a-day child care to children under the age of 5. By 2007, the percentage of children attending subsidized day care had tripled and mothers' labor force participation had increased substantially. Objectively, more labor force participation is seen as a positive change, bringing with it higher income, independence and bargaining power. Yet a decrease in women's subjective well-being over previous decades has been documented, perhaps due to a Second Shift effect where women work more but still bear the brunt of housework and childrearing (Hochschild and Machung, 1989). Using data from the Canadian General Social Survey, we estimate a triple-differences model using differences pre- and post-reform between Quebec and the rest of Canada and between parents with young children and those with older children. Our estimates suggest that Quebec's family policies led to a small decrease in parents' life satisfaction. Of note, though, we find large and positive effects for lower-educated mothers and fathers and negative effects for higher-educated parents. This is consistent with an income effect boosting subjective well-being for lower-educated parents and with negative effects on child outcomes overtaking income effects for more educated households.
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Families Created by Donor Insemination: Father-Child Relationships at Age 7
Polly Casey et al.
Journal of Marriage and Family, August 2013, Pages 858-870
Abstract:
This study examined the psychological well-being of fathers and father-child relationships in families with a 7-year-old child conceived by donor insemination. Twenty-four donor insemination families and comparison groups of 25 egg donation and 32 unassisted-conception families were assessed using a standardized interview and questionnaires administered to the father, and father-child dyads participated in an observational assessment of father-child interaction. On the basis of perspectives from Parental Investment Theory and stress-related models, it was expected that donor insemination fathers would show raised levels of psychological problems and a poorer quality of parenting and have more conflictual relationships with their children than genetically related fathers in egg donation and unassisted-conception families. These hypotheses were not supported by the findings. Instead, it seems that commitment to parenthood may be more important than genetic relatedness for positive father-child relationships.
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The Causal Effects of Father Absence
Sara McLanahan, Laura Tach & Daniel Schneider
Annual Review of Sociology, 2013, Pages 399-427
Abstract:
The literature on father absence is frequently criticized for its use of cross-sectional data and methods that fail to take account of possible omitted variable bias and reverse causality. We review studies that have responded to this critique by employing a variety of innovative research designs to identify the causal effect of father absence, including studies using lagged dependent variable models, growth curve models, individual fixed effects models, sibling fixed effects models, natural experiments, and propensity score matching models. Our assessment is that studies using more rigorous designs continue to find negative effects of father absence on offspring well-being, although the magnitude of these effects is smaller than what is found using traditional cross-sectional designs. The evidence is strongest and most consistent for outcomes such as high school graduation, children's social-emotional adjustment, and adult mental health.
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Helen Neville et al.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 16 July 2013, Pages 12138-12143
Abstract:
Using information from research on the neuroplasticity of selective attention and on the central role of successful parenting in child development, we developed and rigorously assessed a family-based training program designed to improve brain systems for selective attention in preschool children. One hundred forty-one lower socioeconomic status preschoolers enrolled in a Head Start program were randomly assigned to the training program, Head Start alone, or an active control group. Electrophysiological measures of children's brain functions supporting selective attention, standardized measures of cognition, and parent-reported child behaviors all favored children in the treatment program relative to both control groups. Positive changes were also observed in the parents themselves. Effect sizes ranged from one-quarter to half of a standard deviation. These results lend impetus to the further development and broader implementation of evidence-based education programs that target at-risk families.
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Health Care Costs Associated With Child Maltreatment: Impact on Medicaid
Curtis Florence et al.
Pediatrics, August 2013, Pages 312 -318
Objective: To estimate the increased Medicaid expenditures associated with child maltreatment.
Methods: Data on child maltreatment were collected from the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being, a nationally representative sample of cases investigated or assessed by local Child Protective Services agencies between October 1999 and December 2000. Medicaid claims data for 2000 to 2003 were obtained from the Medicaid Analytic Extract (MAX). Children from the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being who had Medicaid were matched to the MAX data by Social Security number or birthdate, gender, and zip code. Propensity score matching was used to select a comparison group from the MAX data. Two-part regression models were used to estimate the impact of child maltreatment on expenditures. Data with individual identifiers were obtained under confidentiality agreements with the collecting agencies.
Results: Children who were identified as maltreated or as being at risk of maltreatment incurred, on average, Medicaid expenditures that were >$2600 higher per year compared with children not so identified. This finding accounted for ∼9% of all Medicaid expenditures for children.
Conclusions: Child maltreatment imposes a substantial financial burden on the Medicaid system. These expenses could be partially offset by increased investment in child maltreatment prevention.
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Parental Involvement with Children at School, Home, and Community
Melissa Stacer & Robert Perrucci
Journal of Family and Economic Issues, September 2013, Pages 340-354
Abstract:
Previous research has focused on examining the effects of parental involvement on children's academic achievement. Less attention has been placed on exploring types of parental involvement from parental reports. This study combines in a single analytic framework predictors from earlier studies with parent-based reports of involvement in three venues: home, school, and community. We examine two categories of predictors: social and economic resources, and parent perceptions and experiences with child's school. Using data from the Parent and Family Involvement Survey, analyses were performed for White, Black, and Latino parents. Consistent with previous findings, our research finds that minority parents are less involved at their child's school than White parents. No ethnic differences in home or community involvement were found.
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Indiscriminate Amygdala Response to Mothers and Strangers After Early Maternal Deprivation
Aviva Olsavsky et al.
Biological Psychiatry, forthcoming
Background: In altricial species, maternal stimuli have powerful effects on amygdala development and attachment-related behaviors. In humans, maternal deprivation has been associated with both "indiscriminate friendliness" toward non-caregiving adults and altered amygdala development. We hypothesized that maternal deprivation would be associated with reduced amygdala discrimination between mothers and strangers and increased parent report of indiscriminate friendliness behaviors.
Methods: Sixty-seven youths (33 previously institutionalized; 34 comparison; age-at-scan 4-17 years) participated in a functional magnetic resonance imaging experiment designed to examine amygdala response to mother versus stranger faces. In-scanner behavior was measured. Indiscriminate friendliness was assessed with parental report.
Results: Comparison youth showed an amygdala response that clearly discriminated mother versus stranger stimuli. Previously institutionalized youths, by contrast, exhibited reduced amygdala discrimination between mothers and strangers. Reduced amygdala differentiation correlated with greater reports of indiscriminate friendliness. These effects correlated with age-at-adoption, with later adoptions being associated with reduced amygdala discrimination and more indiscriminate friendliness.
Conclusions: Our results suggest that early maternal deprivation is associated with reduced amygdala discrimination between mothers and strangers, and reduced amygdala discrimination was associated with greater reports of indiscriminate friendliness. Moreover, these effects increased with age-at-adoption. These data suggest that the amygdala, in part, is associated with indiscriminate friendliness and that there might be a dose-response relationship between institutional rearing and indiscriminate friendliness.
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Quality of early parent input predicts child vocabulary 3 years later
Erica Cartmill et al.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 9 July 2013, Pages 11278-11283
Abstract:
Children vary greatly in the number of words they know when they enter school, a major factor influencing subsequent school and workplace success. This variability is partially explained by the differential quantity of parental speech to preschoolers. However, the contexts in which young learners hear new words are also likely to vary in referential transparency; that is, in how clearly word meaning can be inferred from the immediate extralinguistic context, an aspect of input quality. To examine this aspect, we asked 218 adult participants to guess 50 parents' words from (muted) videos of their interactions with their 14- to 18-mo-old children. We found systematic differences in how easily individual parents' words could be identified purely from this socio-visual context. Differences in this kind of input quality correlated with the size of the children's vocabulary 3 y later, even after controlling for differences in input quantity. Although input quantity differed as a function of socioeconomic status, input quality (as here measured) did not, suggesting that the quality of nonverbal cues to word meaning that parents offer to their children is an individual matter, widely distributed across the population of parents.
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Chris Herbst
Journal of Public Economics, September 2013, Pages 86-105
Abstract:
Although a large literature examines the effect of non-parental child care on preschool-aged children's cognitive development, few studies deal convincingly with the potential endogeneity of child care choices. Using a panel of infants and toddlers from the Birth cohort of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (ECLS-B), this paper attempts to provide causal estimates by leveraging heretofore unrecognized seasonal variation in child care participation. Child assessments in the ECLS-B were conducted on a rolling basis throughout the year, and I use the participation "dip" among those assessed during the summer as the basis for an instrumental variable. The summer participation dip is likely to be exogenous because ECLS-B administrators strictly controlled the mechanism by which children were assigned to assessment dates. The OLS results show that children utilizing non-parental arrangements score higher on tests of cognitive ability, a finding that holds after accounting for individual fixed effects. However, the instrumental variables estimates point to sizeable negative effects of non-parental care. The adverse effects are driven by participation in formal settings, and, contrary to previous research, I find that disadvantaged children do not benefit from exposure to non-parental care.
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Dhaval Dave et al.
NBER Working Paper, June 2013
Abstract:
A substantial body of research has found that expansions in Medicaid eligibility increased enrollment in Medicaid, reduced the rate of uninsured, and reduced the rate of private health insurance coverage (i.e., crowd out). Notably, there has been little research that has examined the mechanism by which crowd-out occurs. This study examines the effects of expansions in Medicaid eligibility for pregnant women in the late 1980s and the early 1990s on labor supply, which is one of the possible mechanisms underlying crowd out. Estimates suggest that the 20 percentage point increase in Medicaid eligibility during the sample period was associated with a 6% to 7% decrease in the probability that a woman who gave birth in the past year was employed. Among unmarried women with less than a high school education, the change in Medicaid eligibility reduced employment by approximately 13% to 16%.
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Relieving the Time Squeeze? Effects of a White-Collar Workplace Change on Parents
Rachelle Hill et al.
Journal of Marriage and Family, August 2013, Pages 1014-1029
Abstract:
Employed parents perceive a time squeeze even as trends from the 1960s show they are spending more time with their children. Work conditions (e.g., hours and schedule control) would seem to affect both parents' time with children and perceived time squeeze, but most studies rely on cross-sectional data that do not establish causality. The authors examined the effects of the introduction of a workplace flexibility initiative (Results Only Work Environment [ROWE]) on changes in mothers' and fathers' perceptions of the adequacy of their time with children and actual time spent with children (N = 225). Baseline data show the importance of work conditions for parents' sense of perceived time adequacy. Panel data show that mothers (but not fathers) in ROWE report increased schedule control and improved time adequacy, but no change in actual time spent with children, except that ROWE increases evening meals with children for mothers sharing few meals at baseline.
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Child Care and Cortisol Across Early Childhood: Context Matters
Daniel Berry et al.
Developmental Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
A considerable body of literature suggests that children's child-care experiences may impact adrenocortical functioning in early childhood. Yet emerging findings also suggest that the magnitude and sometimes the direction of child-care effects on development may be markedly different for children from higher risk contexts. Using data from a large population-based sample of families from predominantly low-income backgrounds in rural communities, we tested the degree to which links between children's child-care experiences (at 7-36 months) and their subsequent cortisol levels (at 48 months) were moderated by their level of cumulative environmental risk. Our results provided evidence of a crossover interaction between cumulative risk and child-care quantity. For children from low-risk contexts, greater weekly hours in child care were predictive of higher cortisol levels. In contrast, for children facing several cumulative risk factors, greater hours in child care per week were predictive of lower cortisol levels. These effects were robust after adjusting for several controls, including children's cortisol levels in early infancy. Child-care quality and type were not predictive of children's cortisol levels, and neither mitigated the conditional effect of child-care quantity on cortisol. These findings suggest that links between child care and children's development may differ as a function of children's broader ecologies.
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Leslie Seltzer et al.
Child Development, forthcoming
Abstract:
Child maltreatment often has a negative impact on the development of social behavior and health. The biobehavioral mechanisms through which these adverse outcomes emerge, however, are not clear. To better understand the ways in which early life adversity affects subsequent social behavior, changes in the neuropeptide oxytocin (OT) in children (n = 73) aged 8.1-11.5 years following a laboratory stressor were examined. Girls with histories of physical abuse have higher levels of urinary OT and lower levels of salivary cortisol following the stressor when compared to controls. Abused and control boys, however, do not differ in their hormonal responses. These data suggest that early adversity may disrupt the development of the stress regulation system in girls by middle childhood.
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A brief intervention affects parents' attitudes toward using less physical punishment
Antwon Chavis et al.
Child Abuse & Neglect, forthcoming
Abstract:
Consecutive English and Spanish speaking caregivers of 6-24 month old children were randomly assigned to either a control or intervention group. Parents in the intervention group were instructed to view at least 4 options to discipline a child in an interactive multimedia program. The control group participants received routine primary care with their resident physician. After the clinic visit, all parents were invited to participate in a research study; the participation rate was 98% (258/263). The key measure was the Attitudes Toward Spanking (ATS) scale. The ATS is correlated with parents' actual use of physical punishment. Parents with higher scores are more likely to use physical punishment to discipline their children. Parents in the intervention group had an ATS score that was significantly lower than the ATS score of parents in the control group (median = 24.0, vs. median = 30; p = 0.043). Parents in the control group were 2 times more likely to report that they would spank a child who was misbehaving compared with parents in the intervention group (16.9% vs. 7.0%, p = 0.015). In the short-term, a brief intervention, integrated into the primary care visit, can affect parents' attitudes toward using less physical punishment. It may be feasible to teach parents to not use physical punishment using a population-based approach. The findings have implications for how to improve primary care services and the prevention of violence.
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Jennifer Martin McDermott et al.
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, May 2013
Abstract:
Early psychosocial deprivation can negatively impact the development of executive functions (EFs). Here we explore the impact of early psychosocial deprivation on behavioral and physiological measures (i.e., event-related potentials; ERPs) of two facets of EF, inhibitory control and response monitoring, and their associations with internalizing and externalizing outcomes in the Bucharest Early Intervention Project (BEIP; Zeanah et al., 2003). This project focuses on two groups of children placed in institutions shortly after birth and then randomly assigned in infancy to either a foster care intervention or to remain in their current institutional setting. A group of community controls was recruited for comparison. The current study assesses these children at 8-years of age examining the effects of early adversity, the potential effects of the intervention on EF and the role of EF skills in socio-emotional outcomes. Results reveal exposure to early psychosocial deprivation was associated with impaired inhibitory control on a flanker task. Children in the foster care intervention exhibited better response monitoring compared to children who remained in the institution on the error-related positivity (Pe). Moreover, among children in the foster care intervention those who exhibited larger error-related negativity (ERN) responses had lower levels of socio-emotional behavior problems. Overall, these data identify specific aspects of EF that contribute to adaptive and maladaptive socio-emotional outcomes among children experiencing early psychosocial deprivation.
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Christine Parsons et al.
Social Neuroscience, July/August 2013, Pages 268-274
Abstract:
Infant faces elicit early, specific activity in the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), a key cortical region for reward and affective processing. A test of the causal relationship between infant facial configuration and OFC activity is provided by naturally occurring disruptions to the face structure. One such disruption is cleft lip, a small change to one facial feature, shown to disrupt parenting. Using magnetoencephalography, we investigated neural responses to infant faces with cleft lip compared with typical infant and adult faces. We found activity in the right OFC at 140 ms in response to typical infant faces but diminished activity to infant faces with cleft lip or adult faces. Activity in the right fusiform face area was of similar magnitude for typical adult and infant faces but was significantly lower for infant faces with cleft lip. This is the first evidence that a minor change to the infant face can disrupt neural activity potentially implicated in caregiving.
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Race/Ethnicity, Attitudes, and Living With Parents During Young Adulthood
Marcus Britton
Journal of Marriage and Family, August 2013, Pages 995-1013
Abstract:
Non-White young adults are more likely to live with their parents throughout their 20s, more likely to return home after going away to college, and less likely to leave again after returning. Scholars have speculated that subcultural differences in attitudes toward marriage and family play a key role in generating racial/ethnic differences in rates of coresidence with parents among young adults. Data from the National Education Longitudinal Survey of 1988 (N = 11,228) were analyzed in order to test this hypothesis. Attitudes toward marriage and family were significantly associated with coresidence, especially among young men, but did not substantially account for racial/ethnic differences in living arrangements. Among young non-White women and young Black men, higher rates of coresidence were related to differences from Whites in socioeconomic or marital status (and sometimes both) that were largely independent of differences in attitudes toward marriage and family.
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Rachel Gordon et al.
Early Childhood Research Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
Most research focuses on preschoolers' primary non-parental child care arrangement despite evidence that multiple arrangements are relatively common. Using the nationally-representative Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort, we compare characteristics and outcomes of families whose 4-year olds attend both home- and center-based child care with those who attend either home- or center-based care exclusively or receive no non-parental care at all. We find that about one fifth of 4-year olds attend both home- and center-based child care. Mothers' priorities for care (getting their child ready for school, matching their families' cultural background) and perceptions of good local care options predict their combining home- and center-based care. Preschoolers' score higher on reading and math assessments, on average, when they attend centers, alone or in combination with home-based child care, than when they are cared for only in homes, either by their parents or by others. Preschoolers' average socioemotional outcomes generally do not differ between families who do and who do not combine care types. Implications for research and policy are discussed.
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The Relationship Between Parents' and Children's Television Viewing
Amy Bleakley, Amy Jordan & Michael Hennessy
Pediatrics, forthcoming
Objective: To examine the effect of parental television viewing on children's television viewing compared with traditional predictors such as household television access, parental rules, and demographic characteristics of the child, parent, and household.
Methods: An online survey using national samples of 1550 parents with children in 3 age groups (children ≤5 years, children aged 6-11 years, and adolescents aged 12-17 years), weighted to be representative of US parents with children in each age group. Adolescents (n = 629) of participating parents were also surveyed.
Results: Parent television time is associated with child television time and had a stronger relationship to child time than access to television in the home or the child's bedroom, as well as parental rules about television viewing and coviewing. This pattern persisted across all age groups of children.
Conclusions: Educating parents about the relationship between their own and their child's viewing may be a useful strategy for interventions that aim to reduce children's excessive television viewing. Additionally, health professionals can engage parents in a discussion about how family television time is associated with increased television time for children.
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The Socioemotional Outcomes of Young Children of Teenage Mothers by Paternal Coresidence
Anne Martin, Adam Brazil & Jeanne Brooks-Gunn
Journal of Family Issues, September 2013, Pages 1217-1237
Abstract:
To date, no study has examined the implications of biological fathers' coresidence for the socioemotional development of children of teenage mothers. Previous research suggests competing hypotheses. Men who father children with teenage women have low education and earnings and are disproportionately likely to be antisocial. However, teenage mothers are less distressed when fathers are more involved caregivers. The current study follows a multicity sample of children born to teenage women (n = 509) for their first 3 years of life in the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study. Children whose biological father coresided continuously (20%) were more likely to be securely attached to their mother and had fewer externalizing problems than other children at age 3. Paternal coresidence did not increase household income, and it only marginally lowered maternal parenting stress.