Maternal-fetal attachment, parenting stress during infancy, and child outcomes at age 3 years.

Maternal-fetal attachment (MFA), a woman's relationship with and affiliative behaviors toward her unborn child, has been linked to near-term infant physical and developmental outcomes. However, further longitudinal research is needed to understand whether the impact of MFA extends past the earliest years of life. The current study explored relationships between MFA and child socioemotional competence and behavior problems at age 3 and whether parenting stress mediated the association between MFA and child outcomes. Data were collected from 221 primarily Black/African-American mothers who completed a scale of MFA during pregnancy. Mothers reported on parenting stress at infant age 7 months and reported on child socioemotional competence and problem behaviors at child age 3 years. In path analyses, MFA was directly associated with child socioemotional competence at age 3 years, but an indirect association between MFA and socioemotional competence via parenting stress was not significant. We also observed a significant indirect association between lower MFA and child internalizing behavior problems via parenting stress that was related to maternal dissatisfaction regarding interactions with her child. Findings suggest that assessing MFA may serve as a means to identify dyads who would benefit from support to promote individual health outcomes.

La afectividad materno-fetal (MFA), la relación y comportamientos de afiliación de una mujer hacia su niño en el vientre, ha sido conectada a los resultados físicos y de desarrollo del infante cuya gestación está cerca al término. Sin embargo, se necesita investigación longitudinal adicional para comprender si el impacto de MFA se extiende más allá de los más tempranos años de vida. El presente estudio exploró las relaciones entre MFA y la competencia socioemocional y problemas de comportamiento del niño a la edad de 3 años y si el estrés de crianza medió la asociación entre MFA y los resultados en el niño. Se recogió información de 221 madres, primariamente negras/afroamericanas, que completaron una escala de MFA durante el embarazo. Las madres reportaron sobre el estrés de crianza cuando el infante tenía 7 meses y reportaron sobre la competencia socioemocional y los problemas de comportamiento del niño cuando éste tenía 3 años. En análisis de trayectoria, se asoció MFA directamente con la competencia socioemocional del niño a la edad de 3 años, pero una asociación indirecta entre MFA y la competencia socioemocional por medio del estrés de crianza no fue significativa. También observamos una significativa asociación indirecta entre MFA y la internalización de problemas del comportamiento por parte del niño vía el estrés de crianza que se relacionó con la insatisfacción materna en cuanto a las interacciones con su niño. Los resultados indican que evaluar MFA pudiera servir como un medio de identificar díadas que se beneficiarían del apoyo para promover resultados de salud individuales.

L'attachement maternel foetal (Maternal-fetal attachment, soit MFA), une relation de la femme avec son enfant à naître et des comportements affiliatifs envers l'enfant à naître, a été lié à des résultats physiques et développementaux du bébé quasiment à terme. Cependant des recherches longitudinales plus approfondies sont nécessaires afin de comprendre si l'impact du MFA dépasse les premières années de la vie. Cette étude a exploré les relations entre le MFA et la compétence socio-émotionnelle de l'enfant et les problèmes de comportement à l'âge de trois ans et si le stress de parentage affectait l'association entre le MFA et les résultats sur l'enfant. Les données ont été recueillies à partir de 221 mères américaines majoritairement noires/afro-américaines qui ont rempli l'échelle du MFA durant la grossesse. Les mères ont fait état de stress de parentage à l'âge de 7 mois pour le bébé et répondu à des questions sur la compétence socio-émotionnelle de l'enfant et les problèmes de comportement à l'âge de 3 ans. Dans les analyses de trajectoire le MFA était directement lié à la compétence socio-émotionnelle de l'enfant à l'âge de 3 ans, mais un lien indirect entre le MFA et la compétence socio-émotionnelle à travers le stress de parentage n'était pas important. Nous avons aussi observé un lien indirect important entre le MFA et les problèmes de comportement d'internalisation de l'enfant au travers du stress de parentage qui était lié à l'insatisfaction maternelle concernant les interactions avec son enfant. Les résultats suggèrent que l'évaluation du MFA peut servir de moyen d'identifier des dyades qui bénéficierait d'un soutien pour promouvoir des résultats de santé individuels.

New directions in understanding the role of environmental contaminants in child development: Four themes.

Environmental contaminants, which include several heavy metals, persistent organic pollutants, and other harmful chemicals, impair several domains of child development. This article describes four themes from recent research on the impact of environmental contaminants on child development. The first theme, disparities in exposure, focuses on how marginalized communities are disproportionately exposed to harmful environmental contaminants. The second theme, complexity of exposures, encapsulates recent emphases on timing of exposures and mixtures of multiple exposures. The third theme, mechanisms that link exposures to outcomes, focuses on processes that elucidate how contaminants impact outcomes. The fourth theme, mitigating risks associated with exposures, sheds light on potential protective factors that could ameliorate many of the harmful effects of contaminant exposures. Developmental scientists are well positioned to contribute to interdisciplinary research that addresses these themes, which could foster additional conceptual and empirical innovations and inform policies and practices to mitigate risks and improve children's well-being.

Fathering across contexts: The moderating role of respiratory sinus arrhythmia in predicting toddler emotion regulation.

Caregivers play an integral role in promoting children's emotion regulation, while children's individual physiology affects how they respond to the caregiving environment. Relatively little is known about how fathering influences toddler emotion regulation, particularly within African American and low-income communities, where risk related to the development of emotion regulation is higher. This study investigated relations among fathering, toddler parasympathetic regulation, and toddler emotion regulation in a sample of 92 families. Fathering was assessed during two interactions: engagement following a stressor during a triadic task and a dyadic play task. Respiratory sinus arrhythmia (resting and reactivity) was obtained as an index of toddler parasympathetic arousal. Findings demonstrated an association between fathers' engagement poststressor and toddler emotion regulation. Toddler RSA moderated this association: toddlers with elevated levels of resting RSA benefitted from parenting engagement following a stressor. Fathering during play did not relate to toddler emotion regulation. The importance of fathering and physiologic contexts in early regulatory development is discussed.

Self-Regulation Mitigates the Association between Household Chaos and Children's Behavior Problems.

Given the potential negative effects that early childhood behavioral problems have on later development, it is important to elucidate risk and protective factors. This study examined household chaos as a predictor of externalizing and internalizing problems among young children from low-income families. Additionally, self-regulation was examined as a moderator of the association between chaos and behavior problems. One hundred young adult mother-toddler dyads participated. Moderation analyses indicated that self-regulation buffered the association between household chaos and child behavior problems. Specifically, greater household chaos was associated with more behavior problems, but only among children with poorer self-regulation. Notably, this pattern was observed for both externalizing and internalizing problems. These findings suggest that early interventions targeting young children's self-regulation skills could help prevent behavior problems among children living in chaotic home environments.

Family cumulative risk and at-risk kindergarteners' social competence: the mediating role of parent representations of the attachment relationship.

Secure attachment relationships have been linked to social competence in at-risk children. In the current study, we examined the role of parent secure base scripts in predicting at-risk kindergarteners' social competence. Parent representations of secure attachment were hypothesized to mediate the relationship between lower family cumulative risk and children's social competence. Participants included 106 kindergarteners and their primary caregivers recruited from three urban charter schools serving low-income families as a part of a longitudinal study. Lower levels of cumulative risk predicted greater secure attachment representations in parents, and scores on the secure base script assessment predicted children's social competence. An indirect relationship between lower cumulative risk and kindergarteners' social competence via parent secure base script scores was also supported. Parent script-based representations of the attachment relationship appear to be an important link between lower levels of cumulative risk and low-income kindergarteners' social competence. Implications of these findings for future interventions are discussed.

Toward an Understanding of the Role of the Environment in the Development of Early Callous Behavior.

Key to understanding the long-term impact of social inequalities is identifying early behaviors that may signal higher risk for later poor psychosocial outcomes, such as psychopathology. A set of early-emerging characteristics that may signal risk for later externalizing psychopathology is callous-unemotional (CU) behavior. CU behavior predicts severe and chronic trajectories of externalizing behaviors in youth. However, much research on CU behavior has focused on late childhood and adolescence, with little attention paid to early childhood when preventative interventions may be most effective. In this article, we summarize our recent work showing that (a) CU behavior can be identified in early childhood using items from common behavior checklists, (b) CU behavior predicts worse outcomes across early childhood, (c) CU behavior exhibits a nomological network distinct from other early externalizing behaviors, and (d) malleable environmental factors, particularly parenting, may play a role in the development of early CU behaviors. We discuss the challenges of studying contextual contributors to the development of CU behavior in terms of gene-environment correlations and present initial results from work examining CU behavior in an adoption study in which gene-environment correlations are examined in early childhood. We find that parenting is a predictor of early CU behavior even in a sample in which parents are not genetically related to the children.

Heritable temperament pathways to early callous-unemotional behaviour.

BACKGROUND: Early callous-unemotional behaviours identify children at risk for antisocial behaviour. Recent work suggests that the high heritability of callous-unemotional behaviours is qualified by interactions with positive parenting. AIMS: To examine whether heritable temperament dimensions of fearlessness and low affiliative behaviour are associated with early callous-unemotional behaviours and whether parenting moderates these associations. METHOD: Using an adoption sample (n = 561), we examined pathways from biological mother self-reported fearlessness and affiliative behaviour to child callous-unemotional behaviours via observed child fearlessness and affiliative behaviour, and whether adoptive parent observed positive parenting moderated pathways. RESULTS: Biological mother fearlessness predicted child callous-unemotional behaviours via earlier child fearlessness. Biological mother low affiliative behaviour predicted child callous-unemotional behaviours, although not via child affiliative behaviours. Adoptive mother positive parenting moderated the fearlessness to callous-unemotional behaviour pathway. CONCLUSIONS: Heritable fearlessness and low interpersonal affiliation traits contribute to the development of callous-unemotional behaviours. Positive parenting can buffer these risky pathways.

Temperament, personality, and quality of life in pediatric cancer patients.

OBJECTIVE: The developmental psychology literature shows that children with higher levels of effortful control (EC) and ego-resilience (ER) display greater social competence and better emotional adjustment. This study examined whether these dispositional attributes contribute to positive quality of life (QOL) in pediatric cancer patients. METHOD: Participants were 103 pediatric cancer patients (and their parents) who were part of a larger parent study. At study entry, parents reported their own anxiety and depression and their children's EC and ER. At 3-month follow-up, parents reported children's QOL. RESULTS: ER was positively correlated with children's QOL. EC showed a positive indirect effect on QOL through ER. Inclusion of potential correlates of pediatric QOL (e.g., parent neuroticism) did not change these relationships. CONCLUSIONS: Temperament and personality play significant roles in pediatric cancer patients' QOL. Assessing dispositional attributes early in treatment may help identify children at risk for poor QOL during and after treatment.

Developing the Technology-based Parenting Young Children Check-Up Intervention for Disruptive Behavior Problems Identified in Pediatric Primary Care.

Objective: Behavioral parent training programs show clear efficacy and effectiveness in response to young children's disruptive behavior problems, but limitations in engagement and accessibility prevent many families from benefiting from these programs. The Parenting Young Children Check-up (PYCC) is a technology-based program designed to overcome these barriers and increase the reach of behavioral parent training. Developed for use in pediatric health care, the PYCC includes three components: 1) an initial check-up designed to motivate program involvement; 2) text messages to connect parents with program content and reinforce content; and 3) a parent training website involving video-based content to teach parenting skills. This report details initial steps to refine PYCC intervention components. Methods: Seventeen mothers and 17 primary care physicians participated in this mixed methods data collection across three iterations by providing feedback on early drafts of the three components of the PYCC and completing a feedback questionnaire. Results: Feedback from one iteration informed modifications that were then evaluated in subsequent iterations. Saturation of qualitative input, positive qualitative feedback, and positive quantitative ratings on the feedback questionnaire was achieved in iteration three. Conclusions: Outcomes of this investigation informed the full version of the PYCC that will subsequently be tested in a proof-of-concept trial. Implications for Impact Statement: Several barriers limit the reach of parenting skills programs that reduce child problem behavior. We gathered feedback from parents and physicians to refine a parenting program that uses technology and delivery in pediatrics to overcome barriers. Future testing of the program will further inform implementation in pediatric settings.

Longitudinal prediction of disruptive behavior disorders in adolescent males from multiple risk domains.

The disruptive behavior disorders are among the most prevalent youth psychiatric disorders, and they predict numerous problematic outcomes in adulthood. This study examined multiple domains of risk during early childhood and early adolescence as longitudinal predictors of disruptive behavior disorder diagnoses among adolescent males. Early adolescent risks in the domains of sociodemographic factors, the caregiving context, and youth attributes were examined as mediators of associations between early childhood risks and disruptive behavior disorder diagnoses. Participants were 309 males from a longitudinal study of low-income mothers and their sons. Caregiving and youth risk during early adolescence each predicted the likelihood of receiving a disruptive behavior disorder diagnosis. Furthermore, sociodemographic and caregiving risk during early childhood were indirectly associated with disruptive behavior disorder diagnoses via their association with early adolescent risk. The findings suggest that preventive interventions targeting risk across domains may reduce the prevalence of disruptive behavior disorders.

Experiential training of mental health graduate students in emotional processing skills: A randomized, controlled trial.

Emotional processing interventions for trauma and psychological conflicts are underutilized. Lack of adequate training in emotional processing techniques and therapists' lack of confidence in utilizing such interventions are barriers to implementation. We developed and tested an experiential training to improve trainees' performance in a set of transtheoretical emotional processing skills: eliciting patient disclosure of difficult experiences, responding to defenses against disclosure, and eliciting adaptive emotions. Mental health trainees (N = 102) were randomized to experiential or standard training, both of which presented a 1-hr individual session administered remotely. Before and after training and at 5-week follow-up, trainees were videorecorded as they responded to videos of challenging therapy situations, and responses were coded for demonstrated skill. Trainees also completed measures of therapeutic self-efficacy, anxiety, and depression at baseline and follow-up. Repeated-measures analysis of variance indicated all three skills increased from pre- to posttraining for both conditions, which were maintained at follow-up. Importantly, experiential training led to greater improvements than standard training in the skills of eliciting disclosure (η² = .05, p = .03), responding to defenses (η² = .04, p = .05), and encouraging adaptive emotions (η² = .23, p < .001) at posttraining, and the training benefits for eliciting disclosure were maintained at follow-up. Both conditions led to improved self-efficacy. Trainees' anxiety decreased in the standard training, but not in the experiential. One session of experiential training improved trainees' emotional processing therapy skills more than didactic training, although more training and practice likely are needed to yield longer lasting skills. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Risk, Emotional Support, Child Abuse Potential, and Parenting During the First Year of the COVID-19 Pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic and associated mitigation efforts created stress that threatened parent and child well-being. Conditions that increase stress within families heighten the likelihood of child abuse, but social support can mitigate the impact. This short-term investigation considered whether cumulative risk, COVID-19 specific risk, and emotional support (one aspect of social support), were associated with child abuse potential during the pandemic. Additionally, we investigated whether emotional support moderated the association between COVID-19 specific risk and child abuse potential, and associations between child abuse potential and emotionally positive and emotionally negative parenting. Participants included 89 parents, from a metropolitan area with a large number of economically distressed families, who completed online questionnaires. COVID-19 specific risk and emotional support each explained additional variance in child abuse potential beyond cumulative risk, but emotional support did not moderate the association between COVID-19 specific risk and child abuse potential. Consistent with expectations, child abuse potential was negatively associated with emotionally positive parenting and positively associated with emotionally negative parenting practices. Results highlight the importance of addressing both risks and supports at multiple levels for parents during times of stress.

Fetal Frontolimbic Connectivity Prospectively Associates With Aggression in Toddlers.

Background: Aggression is a major public health concern that emerges early in development and lacks optimized treatment, highlighting need for improved mechanistic understanding regarding the etiology of aggression. The present study leveraged fetal resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging to identify candidate neurocircuitry for the onset of aggressive behaviors before symptom emergence. Methods: Pregnant mothers were recruited during the third trimester of pregnancy to complete a fetal resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging scan. Mothers subsequently completed the Child Behavior Checklist to assess child aggression at 3 years postpartum (n = 79). Independent component analysis was used to define frontal and limbic regions of interest. Results: Child aggression was not related to within-network connectivity of subcortical limbic regions or within-medial prefrontal network connectivity in fetuses. However, weaker functional coupling between the subcortical limbic network and medial prefrontal network in fetuses was prospectively associated with greater maternal-rated child aggression at 3 years of age even after controlling for maternal emotion dysregulation and toddler language ability. We observed similar, but weaker, associations between fetal frontolimbic functional connectivity and toddler internalizing symptoms. Conclusions: Neural correlates of aggressive behavior may be detectable in utero, well before the onset of aggression symptoms. These preliminary results highlight frontolimbic connections as potential candidate neurocircuitry that should be further investigated in relation to the unfolding of child behavior and psychiatric risk.

School support, chaos, routines, and parents' mental health during COVID-19 remote schooling.

Remote schooling due to Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) created profound challenges for families. In this investigation, we examined parents' depression and anxiety during remote schooling and their associations with parents' reports of school support. We also evaluated indirect and interactive (i.e., moderation) associations. Participants were parents (N = 152, 92.8% mothers, 65.1% Black) from an urban area with high rates of COVID-19. Of the 152 parents, 27.6% reported elevated levels of depression and 34.2% reported elevated anxiety. Regression analyses showed that school support was negatively associated with parents' depression (ß = -.33, p < .01) and anxiety (ß = -.21, p < .01). There was an indirect association between school support and parents' mental health via household chaos and daily routines. Reported COVID-19 impact moderated the direct association between school support and parental depression and anxiety. There was a statistically significant association between school support and parents' depression and anxiety when COVID-19 impact was low or moderate, but not when COVID-19 impact was high. These results may suggest that for parents who were not highly impacted by the pandemic, school support buffered the association between stress and parents' mental health problems; parents most impacted by COVID-19 may need additional support. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Frontal Alpha Asymmetry in Response to Stressor Moderates the Relation Between Parenting Hassles and Child Externalizing Problems.

Inequitable urban environments are associated with toxic stress and altered neural social stress processing that threatens the development of self-regulation. Some children in these environments struggle with early onset externalizing problems that are associated with a variety of negative long-term outcomes. While previous research has linked parenting daily hassles to child externalizing problems, the role of frontal alpha asymmetry (FAA) as a potential modifier of this relationship has scarcely been explored. The present study examined mother-child dyads, most of whom were living in low socioeconomic status households in an urban environment and self-identified as members of racial minority groups. Analyses focused on frustration task electroencephalography (EEG) data from 67 children (mean age = 59.0 months, SD = 2.6). Mothers reported the frequency of their daily parenting hassles and their child's externalizing problems. Frustration task FAA moderated the relationship between parenting daily hassles and child externalizing problems, but resting FAA did not. More specifically, children with left frontal asymmetry had more externalizing problems as their mothers perceived more hassles in their parenting role, but parenting hassles and externalizing problems were not associated among children with right frontal asymmetry. These findings lend support to the motivational direction hypothesis and capability model of FAA. More generally, this study reveals how individual differences in lateralization of cortical activity in response to a stressor may confer differential susceptibility to child behavioral problems with approach motivation (i.e., left frontal asymmetry) predicting externalizing problems under conditions of parental stress.

Antecedents and outcomes of joint trajectories of mother-son conflict and warmth during middle childhood and adolescence.

This study investigated the development of mother-son relationship quality from ages 5 to 15 in a sample of 265 low-income families. Nonparametric random effects modeling was utilized to uncover distinct and homogeneous developmental trajectories of conflict and warmth; antecedents and outcomes of the trajectory groups also were examined. Four conflict trajectory groups and 3 warmth trajectory groups were identified. Difficult temperament in early childhood discriminated both conflict and warmth trajectory group membership (TGM), and adult relationship quality in early childhood was related to warmth trajectories. In addition, conflict TGM differentiated youth antisocial behavior during adolescence, and warmth trajectories predicted adolescent peer relationship quality and youth moral disengagement. Implications for socialization processes are discussed.

Preschool boys' development of emotional self-regulation strategies in a sample at risk for behavior problems.

Little longitudinal research has been conducted on changes in children's emotional self-regulation strategy (SRS) use after infancy, particularly for children at risk. In this study, the authors examined changes in boys' emotional SRS from toddlerhood through preschool. Repeated observational assessments using delay of gratification tasks at ages 2, 3, and 4 years were examined with both variable- and person-oriented analyses in a low-income sample of boys (N = 117) at risk for early problem behavior. Results were consistent with theory on emotional SRS development in young children. Children initially used more emotion-focused SRS (e.g., comfort seeking) and transitioned to greater use of planful SRS (e.g., distraction) by 4 years of age. Person-oriented analysis using trajectory analysis found similar patterns from 2 to 4 years, with small groups of boys showing delayed movement away from emotion-focused strategies or delay in the onset of regular use of distraction. The results provide a foundation for future researchers to examine the development of SRS in low-income young children.

Household Chaos and Early Childhood Behavior Problems: The Moderating Role of Mother-Child Reciprocity in Lower-Income Families.

OBJECTIVE: The study examined whether mother-child reciprocity across increasingly challenging contexts moderated the association between household chaos and early childhood behavior problems. BACKGROUND: Living in a chaotic household is associated with behavioral dysregulation in childhood. An important goal in discordant household contexts is to establish positive aspects of relationships that are associated with more favorable developmental outcomes. METHOD: The study analyzed data from 127 mother-child dyads participating in the 3-year visit in a study of primarily low-income, African American/Black families in urban areas. Dyads were videotaped during three successive, increasingly challenging, interaction tasks. Multiple regression analyses examined household chaos, dyadic reciprocity, and the interplay of those as predictors of behavior problems. RESULTS: Greater household chaos was associated with more internalizing and externalizing behavior problems. Moderation analyses indicated that dyadic reciprocity during two challenging interaction tasks (but not during free play) attenuated the association between household chaos and internalizing problems. CONCLUSIONS: Household chaos was not associated with internalizing problems among dyads who had a connected, supportive relationship in more challenging interactive contexts. IMPLICATIONS: Improving shared positive affect and dyadic harmony in the parent-child relationship may help protect young children against the negative influence of chaotic contexts.

Miswiring the brain: Human prenatal Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol use associated with altered fetal hippocampal brain network connectivity.

Increasing evidence supports a link between maternal prenatal cannabis use and altered neural and physiological development of the child. However, whether cannabis use relates to altered human brain development prior to birth, and specifically, whether maternal prenatal cannabis use relates to connectivity of fetal functional brain systems, remains an open question. The major objective of this study was to identify whether maternal prenatal cannabis exposure (PCE) is associated with variation in human brain hippocampal functional connectivity prior to birth. Prenatal drug toxicology and fetal fMRI data were available in a sample of 115 fetuses [43 % female; mean age 32.2 weeks (SD = 4.3)]. Voxelwise hippocampal connectivity analysis in a subset of age and sex-matched fetuses revealed that PCE was associated with alterations in fetal dorsolateral, medial and superior frontal, insula, anterior temporal, and posterior cingulate connectivity. Classification of group differences by age 5 outcomes suggest that compared to the non-PCE group, the PCE group is more likely to have increased connectivity to regions associated with less favorable outcomes and to have decreased connectivity to regions associated with more favorable outcomes. This is preliminary evidence that altered fetal neural connectome may contribute to neurobehavioral vulnerability observed in children exposed to cannabis in utero.