Poster #46 - Impacts of Maternal Substance Use and Perception of Infant Cries on Maternal Harsh Parenting

• In Event: Poster Session 19

Abstract

Maternal substance use is associated with nonoptimal parenting (Rutherford et al., 2011) which may be due, in part, to altered perceptions of child behavior. For example, a small number of studies have indicated that substance-using mothers exhibit less neural activation to infant cries (Landi et al., 2011) and perceive cries as less aversive (Schuetze et al., 2009) than nonsubstance-using mothers. However, it is not clear how altered perceptions of child signals among substance-using women may impact parenting behavior. Thus, the goal of this study was to examine paths from maternal substance use to harsh discipline via maternal perceptions of infant cry sounds (see Figure 1 for conceptual model).

Mother-child dyads (N = 127) participating in an ongoing longitudinal study were recruited after the first trimester of pregnancy from a prenatal clinic serving predominantly low-income women with prenatal substance use (n = 94) and a non-using comparison group (n = 33). During middle childhood, mothers reported their alcohol and marijuana use patterns using a validated calendar-based interview (Sobell & Sobell, 1992) and completed the Parent-Child Conflict Tactics Scale (PCCTS; Straus, 1997). Mothers also rated an audio recording of a standard newborn cry on 6 items. Items assessing maternal perception of the urgency, unpleasantness, and irritability of infant cries were averaged into a composite cry aversiveness variable. Items assessing the impact of infant cries on maternal sadness, anxiety, and anger were averaged into a composite impact of cry variable. The psychological aggression and physical assault scales of the PCCTS were highly correlated, r(122) = .51, p < .001, and averaged into a composite variable reflecting harsh discipline. Variables that were skewed and kurtotic were transformed using square root transformations.

Path analysis revealed that, controlling for maternal parity and education, higher maternal alcohol and marijuana use predicted more harsh parenting (b = .21, p < .05; b = .36, p < .001), respectively (see Figure 2). The path from aversiveness of infant cry to maternal harsh discipline reached marginal significance (b = .20, p = .08) such that the more aversive mothers perceived infant cries, the more frequent harsh discipline they endorsed. The path from maternal alcohol use to the impact of infant cries on maternal negative affect also reached marginal significance (b = -.17, p = .07), such that the more alcohol mothers drank, the less impact infant cries had on negative affect. Overall, the model was a good fit to the data, χ2 (4) = 3.93, p = n.s.; RMSEA = .00, 90% CI [.00, .42]; CFI = 1.00; SRMR = .02, and explained 27.2% of the variance in harsh parenting.

Consistent with previous literature, we found that maternal substance use was associated with more harsh parenting (see Gruber & Taylor, 2006 for a review). Although, findings of associations between cry perceptions and maternal alcohol use and harsh parenting were only marginal, perhaps due to a moderate sample size, these findings suggest parenting intervention efforts should consider the role that altered maternal perceptions of child behaviors and communicative signals may have in parenting behaviors among substance using mothers.

Authors

• Pamela Schuetze, State University of New York Buffalo State University

• Madison Rachel Kelm, Pennsylvania State University, University Park

• Olivia Bell, State University of New York at Buffalo (SUNY Buffalo)
  Presenting Author

• Rina Das Eiden, The Pennsylvania State Univeristy