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Poster #14 - Influence of Parental Hostility and Socioeconomic Stress on Internalizing Symptom Trajectories From Early Childhood to Adolescence

Sat, March 25, 1:30 to 2:15pm, Salt Palace Convention Center, Floor: 1, Hall A-B

Abstract

Internalizing problems that begin in childhood are associated with detrimental consequences for healthy psychosocial development and have long-term influences on mental health. Elevated internalizing symptoms in adolescents have been associated with increased risk of depression, anxiety, and other psychopathology later in life (Davis et al., 2015; Kwong et al., 2019). Bioecological theory provides a framework for understanding multi-level influences on human development (Bronfenbrenner, 1979, 1986). Beginning in puberty, biological sex contributes to heterogenous patterns of internalizing symptom development between childhood and adolescence (Wu & Lee, 2020). Among many influential ecological components of the framework, parenting has profound effects on children’s mental health (Rinaldi & Howe, 2012) and hostile parenting, specifically, has been associated with child and adolescent internalizing symptoms (Masarik & Conger, 2017). Associations have also been identified between internalizing problems and socioeconomic status, which comprise factors such as parental educational attainment and income (Merz et al., 2018).
This study investigates predictive links between two bioecological factors and internalizing symptoms during childhood and adolescence. Specifically, parental hostility is examined as an interpersonal factor and socioeconomic status is examined as a structural factor predictive of longitudinal patterns of internalizing symptoms. We will use data from two cohorts in the NIH Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) program: Early Growth and Development Study (EGDS; Leve et al., 2019) and Family Life Project (FLP; Blair, 2010). The EGDS’s sample (n = 1,000) includes adopted children across the US followed from infancy through adolescence, and their biological siblings. FLP participants (n = 1,292) are from 6 targeted rural communities in the eastern US that comprise a statistically representative stratified prenatal sample followed since their mothers’ pregnancies between September 2003 and September 2004.
We explore two study aims using a stepwise approach (Figure 1). First, we employ latent class growth mixture modeling to identify distinct developmental trajectories of internalizing symptoms across four times from childhood through adolescence (age 4-17 years) and examine whether males and females show different trajectory groups. Second, we predict class membership from childhood measures of parental hostility and socioeconomic status using multinomial regression analysis and use mediation analysis to test whether parental hostility mediates the effect of socioeconomic stress on class membership. Due to their known associations with both the predictors and outcomes, child racial/ethnic identity, pubertal status, externalizing symptoms, and parental depressive symptoms are included as covariates. We also control for random and/or fixed effects to account for between-cohort differences.
The study will test four hypotheses: (1) Based on previous investigations, 3-5 internalizing symptom trajectories will be identified; (2) A higher proportion of females relative to males will belong to trajectories characterized by all increasing or persistently high levels of internalizing symptoms; (3) Parental hostility and socioeconomic stress during early childhood will be associated independently with membership in classes with higher internalizing symptoms; (4) Socioeconomic stress will have an indirect effect on internalizing symptom trajectories mediated by parental hostility, in addition to the direct effect in hypothesis 3. Analyses are currently ongoing and will be completed in late 2022. 

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