Early Childhood Parenting Growth in Predicting Preschool Effortful Control in a Racially Diverse Sample

• In Event: Examining Relations Between Parental Behaviors and Children’s Self-Regulation with Diverse Samples and Methodologies

Abstract

During infancy, children are not equipped with the cognitive nor motor capacities to regulate their own internal states, requiring them to rely on external forces, primarily parents and other caregivers, to assist in their regulation (Kopp, 1982). This co-regulation is thought to provide children with a blueprint for self-regulation, as it models how a child may tap into their internal resources to modulate arousal states and behavior as necessary cognitive and motor capacities “come online.” Predictable, sensitive, and affectively positive parenting behaviors are thought to facilitate this development (Morawska et al., 2019), whereas overcontrolling and harsh parenting strategies have been associated with weaker child self-regulation (Karreman et al., 2006). However, studies on self-regulation typically examine parenting at single timepoints. This static, trait-like characterization fails to recognize the ways in which parenting practices evolve as children develop and the implications that individual patterns of change in parenting may have on the development of children’s regulatory abilities (Baumrind, 1978).
To help fill this gap in our understanding of the growth in parenting dimensions and their relation to later child psychosocial outcomes, the present study seeks to examine whether initial levels and longitudinal growth in established dimensions of parenting across early childhood uniquely predict child’s effortful control at 4 years old among a sample of racially and ethnically diverse, low-income families. Participants were mothers and infants (N = 403 dyads; 44.5% Black, 43.5% Latinx) on public insurance recruited from hospitals in Pittsburgh and New York City shortly following childbirth. At 6, 18, and 24 months, dyads participated in video-recorded mother-child interaction tasks that were coded for maternal sensitivity, intrusiveness, and positive regard on a 7-point Likert-like scale. At 48 months, mothers rated children’s effortful control via the Children’s Behavior Questionnaire (Rothbart, 2007).
Preliminary analyses revealed that neither sensitivity, intrusiveness, nor positive regard assessed at 6 months were associated with child effortful control at age four. However, at 18 months, sensitivity [r(260) = .15, p = .039] and positive regard [r(260) = .15, p = .017] were positively associated whereas intrusiveness [r(260) = -.14, p = .020] was negatively associated with effortful control. At 24 months, sensitivity [r(257) = .12, p = .046] and intrusiveness [r(257) = -.14, p = .020] continued to significantly correlate with effortful control. Future analyses will use growth modeling (i.e., SEM) to explore whether individual growth in parenting dimensions independently predict pre-school children’s effortful control after accounting for initial levels at 6 months, as well as observer impressions of child self-regulation at age 4. These results will enhance our understanding into growth patterns in parenting behavior among typically underrepresented populations—Black and Latinx, low-income families. The results also will provide important insight into the implications of growth patterns in parenting behavior across early childhood in relation to children’s regulatory abilities, and, ultimately, into optimal timing for parenting intervention programs designed to improve child regulation.

Authors

• Julia A. Gajewski-Nemes, University of Pittsburgh
  Presenting Author

• Pamela Morris-Perez, New York University

• Alan L Mendelsohn, NYU Grossman School of Medicine

• Daniel S. Shaw, University of Pittsburgh