The Role of Family Instability, Household Chaos and Temperament in Children’s Problem Behaviors

• In Event: Poster Session 08
  In Poster Session: PS 08 Topic - Family Context & Processes

Abstract

Unpredictability within the family context, which disrupts the continuity and cohesiveness of child-rearing processes, has been found to be associated with elevated problematic functioning in children (Bronfenbrenner, 1979; Ackerman, Kogos, Youngstrom, Schoff, & Izard, 1999;Vernon-Feagans, Willoughby, & Garrett-Peters, 2016). The present work sought to examine the role of two sources of environmental unpredictability: family instability and household chaos on the development of child problematic functioning. Notably, despite previous evidence linking these unpredictable signals with greater problematic functioning, some studies failed to document the direct associations (e.g., Coldwell, Pike, & Dunn, 2006). Given this, guided by differential susceptibility (Belsky & Pluess, 2009a; Ellis, Boyce, Bakermans-Kranenburg, & van Ijzendoorn, 2011) and diathesis-stress (Zuckerman, 1999) theories, here we also examined the moderating effect of children’s temperament difficulty on the association of environmental unpredictability (i.e., chaos, family instability) and child problematic functioning (Belsky & Pluess, 2009a, 2010).
Participants were 235 young children (M age=2.97 at Wave1) and both of their parents, who were followed for two consecutive annual measurement occasions. Household chaos was assessed by mother-reported Confusion, Hubbub, and Order Scale (Matheny, Wasch, Ludwig, & Phillips, 1995) at Wave1. Family instability was measured at Wave1 by mother-reported Family Instability Questionnaire (Ackerman et al., 1999). Child temperament was assessed at Wave1 by the mother-reported Child Behavior Questionnaire-Short form (Putnam & Rothbart, 2006). A temperament difficulty composite was created, with a higher score reflecting greater anger/frustration, activity, approach/positive anticipation, and lower soothability as well as inhibitory control. The MacArthur Health Behavior Questionnaire (Albow, et al., 1999) was completed by experimenters at Wave 1 and 2 to assess children’s externalizing and internalizing problems.
The latent difference modeling approach with perfect model fit revealed that greater household chaos was associated with greater increases in externalizing problems from wave 1 to 2. In addition, a significant family instability-x-temperament difficulty interaction emerged in predicting the changes in externalizing problems between the two waves. As shown in figure 2, simple slope analyses indicated that greater family instability was associated with more increases in externalizing problems over the year for children with greater temperament difficulty (+1 SD: B = 0.79, p = .04). Such association was not significant for children with lower temperament difficulty (-1 SD: B = -0.41, p = .30). Follow-up analyses adopting Roisman et al. (2012)’s recommendation indicated that the detected family instability-x-temperament difficulty interaction was more consistent with differential susceptibility, in that children with greater temperament difficulty exhibited not only more increases in externalizing problems under a more unstable family context but also lower increases or greater decreases in externalizing problems under less family instability. Finally, additional tests including both two unpredictability indicators suggested that the effects of household chaos and family instability were independent of each other (Figure 1). The present study illuminated the role of different types of family unpredictability signals in association with the development of child problematic behavior. Furthermore, findings for the interactive effects of family instability and child temperament difficulty may inform the design for intervention programs.

Authors

• Minci Zhang, University of Rochester
  Presenting Author

• Zhi Li, Peking University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Melissa L Sturge-Apple, University of Rochester
  Non-Presenting Author

• Patrick Davies, University of Rochester
  Non-Presenting Author