Mental health of Youth Offspring of Adult War-affected youth in Sierra Leone: Effects of Paternal and Maternal Parenting and Offspring Difficulties in Emotion Regulation

• In Event: Intergenerational impacts of war and instability: Caregiver trauma exposure, mental health, parenting, and offspring development

Abstract

Background: The long-term impact of war on youth who were exposure to violent conflicts has been well-documented. There is an increasing interest among researchers in the intergenerational impact of war on the next generation of war-affected youth. Evidence has indicated the negative impact of childhood war exposure on parenting towards the next generation. To elevate the understanding of the intergenerational impact of war, it is important to examine whether and how adult war-affected youth’s parenting practices affect the mental health and psychosocial functioning of their offspring. The present study estimated a mediation model to examine the effects of parental and maternal parenting behaviors (indexed by rejection, ignorance, aggression, and warmth) on offspring’s difficulties in emotion regulation (DERS) and mental health (internalizing and externalizing problems) and the mediating role of offspring’s difficulties in emotion regulation in the model.
Method: Data were derived from an offspring sample recruited at the 4th wave of a longitudinal study with war-affected youth in Sierra Leone. Participants included 175 youth offspring (%girls=52.6%, MeanAge =10.81, SDAge=4.06) raised by adult war-affected youth in Sierra Leone. Participants provided self-reports on demographics, perceived paternal and maternal parenting, difficulties in emotion regulation, and internalizing and externalizing problems. Structural equation modeling was used to estimate the mediation model in Mplus 8.0.
Results: 1. Father’s rejection directly and negatively predicted offspring’s DERS (β=-.38, p < 0.001); 2. Both father's and mother's ignorance positively and directly predicted offspring’s DERS (β=.25, p < 0.05, and β=.39, p < 0.001, respectively); and 4. Mother's warmth parenting directly and negatively predicted offspring’s DERS (β=-.26, p < 0.01); and 5. Father’s rejection, mother's ignorance and warmth indirectly predicted their internalizing and externalizing problems through DERS (indirect effects ranged from .58 to .82, p < 0.05). The model explained 38.2% of the variance of DERS, 15.9% of the variance of internalizing problems, and 17% of the variance of externalizing problems.
Conclusions: Parental interaction has direct or indirect impact on offspring’s DERS and mental health problems whereas father’s rejection and mother’s warmth shows opposite effects on these outcomes. Parental interactions may influence offspring’s mental health problems through patterns of emotion regulation captured on the DERS. The findings highlight the importance of intervention and policy for supporting healthy parent-child relationships among war-affected youth who become parents as well as the emotion regulation skills and mental health of their offspring in post-war settings.

Authors

• Shaobing Su, Boston College
  Presenting Author

• Theresa Stichick Betancourt, Boston College
  Non-Presenting Author