Poster #91 - Caregiver Relationship Instability and Children’s Externalizing Symptoms: Identifying Child Response Processes as Mediators

• In Event: 3-159 - Poster Session 12
  In Poster Session: PS 12 Section - Family Context & Processes

Integrative Statement

Caregiver relationship instability, defined as the frequency of the onset and dissolution of caregiver romantic relationships and cohabitations, has been consistently identified as a risk factor for children’s externalizing problems (Ackerman, Brown, D’Eramo, & Izard, 2002; D’Onofrio et al., 2005; Fomby & Sennott, 2013). Although caregiver relationship instability has commonly been aggregated into a broader composite of family instability (i.e., occupational and residential instability), a growing corpus of studies support caregiver relationship instability as a unique risk factor for externalizing problems above and beyond the predictive roles of other forms of family instability, caregiving practices, parental characteristics, shared genetic factors, demographic characteristics, and child attributes (Ackerman et al., 2002; Coley, Lynch, & Krull, 2015; D’Onofrio et al., 2005; Fomby & Sennott, 2013). However, research has yet to identify child processes that account for associations between caregiver relationship instability. Existing conceptual explanations in the literature have commonly posited three mediating mechanisms (i.e., negative family representations, dominant interpersonal strategies for regulating resources, low task persistence) that may account for associations between caregiver relationship instability increases in children’s externalizing problems (e.g., Cavanagh & Huston, 2008; Ellis, Bianchi, Griskevicius, & Frankenhuis, 2017; Ellis & Del Giudice, in press; Fiese & Winter, 2010; Glover, 2011). These explanations are supported by several developmental theories, including life history and attachment theory (Belsky et al., 2012). According to these theories children’s implicit data sampling of unpredictable family contexts organizes a pattern of response processes that prepare children for facing future threatening and impoverished socialization contexts through the prioritization of defending against social threats and short-term over long-term goals. This pattern of responses, in turn, is proposed to coalesce over time into more stable patterns of risky and disruptive behavior problems. Thus, the present study aimed to break new ground by delineating children’s negative family representations, dominant interpersonal strategies, and low persistence as possible mediating mechanisms in the pathway between caregiver relationship instability and children’s externalizing problems.
Participants included 243 preschool children and their mothers from diverse demographic backgrounds who participated in three annual waves of data collection. Table 1 outlines the multimethod, multi-informant battery of measures used to assess dimensions of family instability, and children’s negative family representations, task persistence, dominant interpersonal strategies, and externalizing problems.
Consistent with previous research (e.g., Hartman et al., in press), analyses indicated that caregiver relationship instability, but not residential or occupational instability, predicted increases in externalizing symptoms over a two-year period prior to the inclusion of the mediating mechanisms (Figure 1). Supporting the hypothesized mediational chain, Wave 1 caregiver relationship instability uniquely predicted subsequent increases in children’s negative family representations, dominant interpersonal strategies, and low persistence from Wave 1 to Wave 2 even after controlling for the negligible roles of other forms of instability. Increases in these three response processes from Waves 1 to 2 in turn, predicted increases in children’s externalizing symptoms from Wave 1 to 3. Results will be interpreted in the context of how they inform and refine key theories of unpredictability, including life history and attachment formulations.

Authors

• Morgan J Thompson, University of Rochester
  Presenting Author

• Patrick Davies, University of Rochester
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jesse L. Coe, Alpert Medical School of Brown University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Melissa Sturge-Apple, University of Rochester
  Non-Presenting Author