Poster #12 - Internalizing Problems of Early School-Age Children in Turkey: The Role of Perceived Parenting, Temperament, and Gender

• In Event: Poster Session 04

Abstract

Internalizing problems, which include depression, anxiety, and somatic complaints, are considered as a common type of psychopathology experienced by children and adolescents (Zahn-Waxler et al., 2000). Through childhood, early school-age appears as a particularly sensitive period for internalizing problems in which children are vulnerable since they started formal education that may make them more stressed (Fabian & Dunlop, 2007; Groeneveld et al., 2013); therefore, the present study focused on 1st and 2nd graders. Parents constitute immediate environment for their children (Bronfenbrenner, 1979), and they play a significant role in their internalizing problems (for meta-analyses: McLeod, Weisz et al., 2007; McLeod, Wood et al., 2007). Specifically, while positive parenting behaviors are associated with lower internalizing problems in children, negative parenting practices are found to be related with increased levels of internalizing problems (Pinquart et al., 2017; Rose et al., 2018). Additionally, mothers’ and fathers’ parenting behaviors seem to play differential roles on children’s internalizing problems (Möller et al., 2016); thus, research pointed out the importance of examining both mothers’ and fathers’ parenting behaviors simultaneously (e.g., Van Der Bruggen et al., 2008). In the present study, the roles of perceived maternal and paternal warmth, overprotection, and rejection are examined. Parenting might not affect all children in the same way, which brings about the importance of individual factors such as children’s temperament and gender. Studies indicated that negative affect is a “susceptibility marker” which strengthens the impact of both positive and negative parenting practices on children (Slagt et al., 2016). Moreover, child gender also plays a role in the associations between parenting, internalizing problems, and temperament (Roelofs et al., 2006; Nishikawa et al., 2010). Thus, both child temperamental negative affectivity and gender are included as moderators. The participants of this study are 1005 1st and 2nd grade children and their mothers from 36 cities and 61 schools in Turkey, who were reached in the scope of a nationally representative project within January and July 2022. Data merge and screening processes had just been completed and data will be analyzed through hierarchical regression analyses via IBM SPSS Statistics 28 and the interactions will be examined in detail with Process Macro models in SPSS if they reach significance. It is expected that while parental warmth would be associated with lower levels of internalizing problems, parental overprotection and rejection would be associated with higher levels of internalizing problems. Furthermore, it is expected that for children with higher levels of temperamental negative affectivity, the associations between perceived parenting behaviors and internalizing problems would be stronger. Lastly, it is expected that child gender would be a moderator between the associations of perceived parenting, child temperament, and internalizing problems.

Authors

• İlayda Çalışkan, Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi (METU)
  Presenting Author

• Basak Sahin-Acar, Middle East Technical University

• Aysun Dogan, Ege University

• Deniz Tahiroglu, Boğaziçi Üniversitesi (BOUN)

• Sibel KazakBerument, Middle East Technical University