ABSTRACT
The goal of this study was to examine whether barriers to accessing health care and negative pregnancy experiences would predict depressive symptomatology and attachment to their neonates among Black mothers from low-income backgrounds across the perinatal period. We were also interested in examining whether these mothers' engagement in prenatal health practices would buffer against their pregnancy experiences to promote positive postnatal maternal functioning. Participants were 118 Black pregnant women from low-income backgrounds, recruited from WIC and Early Head Start programs. A prenatal assessment between 28 and 40 weeks gestation measured pregnancy experiences and prenatal health practices, and a postnatal assessment about 4 weeks postpartum measured maternal functioning in the form of depressive symptoms and attachment to their neonates. Linear regressions with prenatal health practices included as a moderator suggested that while engaging in positive health practices during pregnancy could potentially buffer against negative pregnancy experiences and prenatal depressive symptoms, it is unlikely to buffer against barriers to accessing health care. These results imply the need to provide support for accessing health care among pregnant women to address disparities in the United States. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).
Subject(s)
Black or African American , Depression , Health Services Accessibility , Poverty , Humans , Female , Pregnancy , Adult , Black or African American/psychology , Depression/psychology , Depression/ethnology , Prenatal Care , Mothers/psychology , Object Attachment , Mother-Child Relations/psychology , Young Adult , United States , Infant, NewbornABSTRACT
Applying theories of emotion to understanding the regulation of aversive parenting, we used microanalytic observational methods to test whether transient changes in a mother's negative emotional reactivity predict changes over time in key parameters of her moment-to-moment aversive behavior: its intensity, variability, persistence, and connection to difficult child inputs. At multiple times over 2 years, 319 divorcing mothers and their 5- to 12-year-old children were observed as they discussed mutual disagreements. Sequences of talk-turns were recorded and coded for affect and content. Relative to days when a mother was low in negative emotional reactivity, on days when she was high she displayed more intensely aversive behavior, more variable aversiveness, more transitions from average to high or low aversiveness, tendencies to remain aversive longer following spikes in her aversiveness, and difficulty maintaining low aversiveness following drops in her aversiveness. As her negative emotional reactivity increased, she went from being relatively unaffected by children's difficult behavior to being aversively reactive; from ceasing aversive sequences increasingly quickly to ceasing aversive sequences increasingly slowly; from deviating more from her nonreactive low-aversive parenting to deviating less from her reactive high-aversive parenting. Independent of stable individual differences in mothers and children, transient variations in mothers' emotional reactivity may correspond to key moment-to-moment parameters of aversive parenting, even when interactions are relatively noncontentious. The data provide a viable account of how initially transient, context-specific reactivity could initiate moment-to-moment changes in aversive patterns that in some families influence problematic family trajectories over time. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).
Subject(s)
Mothers , Parenting , Child , Child Behavior/psychology , Child, Preschool , Emotions/physiology , Female , Humans , Mother-Child Relations/psychology , Mothers/psychology , Parenting/psychology , Stress, Psychological/psychologyABSTRACT
In this study, we experimentally examined parents' perceptions of scientific information about spanking, a controversial topic, and car seat safety, a consensus topic, presented in online news articles. Specifically, we tested whether parents of children ages 2 to 8 years would trust scientific experts (speaking from professional expertise) more than online lay commenters (speaking from personal experience). One hundred and eighty parents across 41 U.S. states were recruited online from Amazon's Mechanical Turk (124 mothers, 56 fathers; 74% White, 9% Black, 8% Latino, 8% Asian, and 1% other or multiple ethnicities). Parents were randomly assigned to read a news article with an expert discussing spanking research that varied by two conditions: The news article contained either anti-spanking lay comments or pro-spanking lay comments. All parents also read a second news article on car seat safety (a consensus topic). Between-condition analyses were used to compare perceptions of the comment conditions, and within-condition analyses were used to compare perceptions of the expert knowledge versus the comments and to compare perceptions of the spanking expert versus the car seat expert. Moderation analyses were used to compare parents' perceptions based on their attitudes toward spanking. Parents with positive attitudes toward spanking recognized pro-spanking comments as opinion, yet still found them more trustworthy than a scientist taking the opposite position. All parents perceived the car seat expert as trustworthy. The results highlight challenges in disseminating information about controversial topics to the public. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).
Subject(s)
Child Restraint Systems/adverse effects , Internet/statistics & numerical data , Parents/psychology , Punishment/psychology , Trust , Adult , Aged , Child , Child, Preschool , Female , Humans , Male , Middle Aged , United States , Young AdultABSTRACT
Based on data from 710 2-parent families enrolled in the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development, this article examined dyadic and family-level interdependence among indicators of family members' competence over time. A cross-lagged model that included children and both parents was used to simultaneously test relations among observed maternal sensitivity, observed paternal sensitivity, and children's externalizing behavior from 54 months to fifth grade. Testing 3 principal hypotheses, the study supported basic assumptions of a transactional family systems approach: (a) mother-child and father-child relations were independent predictors of change in children's and parents' behavior across middle childhood; (b) at all assessments, each parents' sensitive parenting predicted subsequent change in the other's sensitive parenting; and (c) both dyadic indirect effects between two family members and family-level indirect effects among all 3 family members were found. When predicting each members' behavior over time, a model that included both dyadic and family-level relations was superior to models that included only dyadic relations. Tests of 2 exploratory hypotheses suggested that (a) fathers' parenting predicted changes in mothers' parenting as equally as mothers' parenting predicted changes in fathers' parenting; and (b) mothers' parenting tended to be more influential early in development, and fathers' parenting was more influential later in development. The results suggest that individual development within families reflects complex dyadic and family-level interdependence among the behaviors of mothers, fathers, and their children over time. (PsycINFO Database Record
