3-217 - Family and Parent Factors, Child Stress Exposure, and Child Outcomes: Implications for Intergenerational Transmission Processes

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Parents’ characteristics, marital and family context, and the environment all play a role in children’s early development. The impact of parental traits and behavior has important implications, especially when considering outcomes, like stress, that themselves affect several areas of functioning. The link between parental risk factors and children’s stress responses has been well-established. However, the mechanisms through which these connections occur remain unclear, especially when considering the various influences on children’s outcomes, and their changing impact at different developmental stages. This symposium will systematically explore the mechanisms that link parents’ and children’s experience of stress prenatally, in toddlerhood, and in middle childhood.

The first presentation will examine marital satisfaction and relational conflict as factors affecting the prenatal environment through expecting mothers’ cortisol levels. The second presentation will report findings indicating that maternal executive function (EF) affects toddlers’ physiological stress response, both directly and through the effects of maternal EF on negative parenting practices. Finally, the third presentation will discuss the interrelationships between family stressors, children’s own assessments of their experience of stress, and children’s psychosocial functioning, in a low-income sample.

This symposium will provide evidence for the role of the parent, the child, the immediate environment and the rearing context in the development of children’s stress responses. Further, these findings will enable the discussant to explore the effects of individual and social factors across development and to consider potential reciprocal processes, providing a better understanding of the mechanisms of the intergenerational transmission of stress and potential avenues for its prevention.

Sub Unit

• Family Context & Processes

Chair

• Caitlin Ford Canfield, NYU School of Medicine

Discussant

• Kirby Deater-Deckard, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, USA

Individual Presentations

• Intrapsychic and Interpersonal Correlates of Diurnal HPA Activity in First-Time Expectant Mothers - Presenting Author: Eric D. Finegood, New York University; Clancy B. Blair, New York University

• Maternal Executive Functioning, Stressful Parenting Practices, and Toddler Cortisol Reactivity to a Laboratory Stressor - Presenting Author: David Bridgett, Northern Illinois University, Department of Psychology; Jacob Holzman, Northern Illinois University; Meghan Kanya, Northern Illinois University; Erin Edwards, Northern Illinois University

• The Role of Maternal Depression in the Link between Children's Stress and Psychosocial Functioning - Presenting Author: Caitlin Ford Canfield, NYU School of Medicine; Adriana Weisleder, New York University School of Medicine; Carolyn Brockmeyer Cates, New York University School of Medicine, Department of Pediatrics; Anne Seery, New York University School of Medicine; Angelica Alonso, NYU School of Medicine; Caroline Raak, NYU School of Medicine; Alan Mendelsohn, New York University School of Medicine