Poster #150 - Successful Development of Conscience and Self-Regulation among Preschoolers with a Parental History of Incarceration

• In Event: 2-055 - Poster Session 06
  In Poster Session: PS 06 Section - Parenting & Parent-Child Relationships

Integrative Statement

An estimated 33 million children in the U.S. have a parent with a criminal record. Children with a parental history of antisocial behavior or incarceration are more likely to engage in antisocial behavior themselves. Yet, many will instead take a more prosocial path, but virtually nothing is known about the mechanisms that underlie this resilience. In addition, most intergenerational research on antisocial behavior is with adolescent offspring. Yet, the preschool period is crucial for socialization.

We examine the socialization process in 4- to 6-year-old children of parents with a history of incarceration from the Northwestern Juvenile Project (NJP). The NJP sample was recruited from a juvenile detention center in the Midwest and followed prospectively over the past 20 years.

We propose that, among families with a parental history of incarceration, substantial individual differences exist in the quality of parent-child relationships, which will be associated with the child’s socialization. In particular, we hypothesize that parent-child mutually responsive orientation and the child’s trust in the parent’s knowledge will be associated with the child’s higher emerging conscience and self-regulation as well as lower disruptive behavior problems.

Method.
We conducted a pilot study with 11 NJP families. Children’s ages ranged from 53 to 74 months (M = 62.4, SD = 7.4), 4/11 were girls. Parents were mothers in 7/11 cases.

Child Socialization Outcome Measures:
Observed child conscience – behavioral component included compliance, non-compliance (reversed) and internalization of rules (Kochanska & Kim, 2014).
Observed child conscience – emotional component included concern for others and discomfort following rule violation (Hastings et al. 2000).
Parent-reported conscience was the total score on My Child questionnaire (Kochanska et al., 1994).
Observed child self-regulation indicated ability to inhibit a prepotent response on 4 tasks: Tower, Day/Night and Snow/Grass, Wrapping Gift and Gift Delay (Kochanska et al., 1996; Wakschlag et al., 2008).
Child disruptive behavior problems was the total score on MAP-DB Mini (Wakschlag et al., 2014).

Parent-Child Relationship Quality Measures:
Mutually responsive orientation was coded from direct observation of parent-child interactions during 4 tasks (Kochanska & Kim, 2014).
Child’s trust in the parent’s knowledge was the child’s tendency to endorse the parent’s responses over that of a stranger, in Novel Objects (Corriveau et al. 2009).

Results.
Table 1 presents the results of regression analyses on child socialization outcomes, as predicted by mutually responsive orientation and child trust in parent’s knowledge (separately), controlling for the child’s age (n = 11).

Discussion. Our results support the hypothesis that the child’s trust in the parent’s knowledge contribute to the development of conscience (behavioral component only) and self-regulation, although these effects do not translate into fewer disruptive behaviors. Contrary to our hypothesis, mutually responsive orientation was not associated with the child’s conscience, self-regulation, or disruptive behavior. By the time of the SRCD meeting, we will have collected data on approximately 70 more families. We will update our results with those data.

Identifying the resilience mechanisms among families with a parental incarceration history would significantly advance the development of effective programs to prevent the intergenerational transmission of antisocial behavior.

Authors

• Amélie Petitclerc, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University
  Presenting Author

• Makeda Springette, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine
  Non-Presenting Author

• Elisabeth Severini, Northwestern University
  Non-Presenting Author