Poster #59 - Parent-Child Discordant Reports of Child Internalizing Symptoms: Associations with Early and Current Life Stress

• In Event: 1-169 - Poster Session 04
  In Poster Session: PS 04 Section - Developmental Psychopathology

Integrative Statement

Background. It is well established that parents are often poor reporters of their children’s internalizing symptoms (De Los Reyes & Kazdin, 2005). This may be especially true of adoptive parents who are more likely to report problem behavior and seek mental health help for their children compared to children reared in their birth families (Wiik et al., 2011). Much literature has examined the mechanisms of this discordance in reporting of internalizing problems. Less explored is whether discordance is greater for youth adopted following early life adversity and whether discordance is related to children’s current life stress.

Methods. The current study examined discordant reporting of internalizing symptoms among children adopted from orphanages (i.e., post-institutionalized, [PI]) and non-adopted [NA] youth and its relation to researcher-rated child stress. Participants were 308 youth (58.4% female; n = 132 PI) aged 7-15 years (median = 11.27) and their parents. PI youth spent the majority of their pre-adoptive life (5.5-59.0, median = 15.0 months) in international orphanages before being adopted by highly-resourced Minnesotan families. Parents and youth reported children’s internalizing symptoms via the MacArthur Health and Behavior Questionnaire (Essex et al., 2002). A discordance score was created by taking the absolute value of the difference between reporters’ Z-scores, such that greater values indicate greater discordance. Youth also completed the Youth Life Stress Interview (Rudolph & Hammen, 1999), a semi-structured interview assessing life stressors across several domains in the past year, which was coded by researchers trained to high reliability.

Results. Discordance scores were higher for PI (M = -.170, SD = .043) than NA (M = -.324, SD = .036) groups; F(1, 302) = 7.50, p = .007. The stress interviews also scored PI youth as having higher concurrent stress (M = 2.55, SD = .60) than NA youth M = 2.25, SD = .49); t (250.40) = 4.64, p < .001). A hierarchical linear regression was used to predict child stress. The first model, consisting of age and sex, was not significant. The second model added group and was significant, R2=.080, F(3, 298) = 8.50, p < .001. The final model also added discordance, which significantly improved model fit,  R2=.028, p = .003. Group, β=-.23, t=-3.95, p<.001, and discordance, β=.171, t=3.02, p=.003, predicted stress score, such that larger discordance predicted higher stress scores.

Conclusions. These results demonstrate that youth adopted from adversity are more likely to have parents who “see” their child’s internalizing states less well than parents “see” their own biological children’s internalizing states. Even controlling for group differences in concurrent stress, greater parent-child discordance was associated with higher concurrent stress. Data from year two of this project will be ready by the time of the conference and will allow us to determine whether concurrent stress increases discordance or whether discordance increases stressors in children’s lives. These findings may help with understanding emotional problems experienced by adopted youth with adverse early life histories.

Authors

• Melissa L. Engel, University of Minnesota
  Presenting Author

• Carrie E DePasquale, Institute of Child Development
  Non-Presenting Author

• Bonny Donzella, University of Minnesota
  Non-Presenting Author

• Megan Gunnar, University of Minnesota
  Non-Presenting Author