Home environments of Early Head Start families: Are they linked to parenting stress and parent-child relationships?

• In Event: Poster Session 14
  In Poster Session: PS 14 Topic - Family Context & Processes

Abstract

Household chaos is characterized by a lack of structure, organization, and predictability. In ecological systems theory, chaotic home environments can disrupt the proximal processes that shape children’s development, such as responsive parenting (Bronfenbrenner & Evans, 2000). A recent systematic review found that household chaos is consistently linked with a range of family, parent, and child outcomes across childhood (Marsh et al., 2020). Among families with young children, chaos at home has been linked with parenting behaviors, children’s behavioral problems (Coldwell et al. 2006) and children’s language development (Vernon-Feagans et al., 2012), for example.

Routines for sleep, meals, reading, and parent-child play, such as storytelling and singing, can add order to children’s daily lives, and enhance their development. These types of routines are positively associated with children’s self-regulation and cognitive skills when children are as young as 14 months (Ferretti & Bub, 2014; Raikes et al., 2006). Bedtime routines that regularly involve reading, singing, or storytelling even predict children’s future language development and sleep duration, two years later (Hale et al., 2011).

Early Head Start (EHS) programs can have lasting positive impacts on parenting behaviors, including greater use of daily reading (Love et al., 2002). This poster presentation will update our knowledge about the home environment of EHS children and families and explore whether household chaos and routines relate to parenting stress and parent-child relationships. We hypothesize that positive home environments, marked by low levels of chaos, will have a negative association with parenting stress and a positive association with parent-child relationships.

Using a nationally representative sample of 2,301 EHS families, we explore parent reports of the level of confusion and disorganization at home, using the Confusion, Hubbub, and Order Scale (CHAOS; Matheny et al., 1995), and their household routines for meals, sleep, reading, singing, storytelling, and screen time. First, we use these data to describe the home environments of EHS families overall, including whether families’ use of screen time aligns with the American Academy of Pediatrics’ recommendations for infants and toddlers. Then, to provide a deeper understanding of the types of home environments among EHS families, we use cluster analysis to organize EHS families into distinct home environment profiles. Finally, we conduct one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) to explore whether families’ home environment profiles are associated with parent-reported measures of parenting stress and the quality of parent-child relationships.

These findings will help EHS programs and the systems that support them to better understand the home environments of the families they serve. This knowledge may help staff better target their ongoing efforts to promote positive home environments and parent-child relationships among EHS families. The findings may also be relevant to other practitioners and researchers interested in understanding and improving home environments and parent-child relationships for infants and toddlers.

Authors

• Cassandra Baxter, Mathematica
  Presenting Author

• Yange Xue, Mathematica Policy Research - New Jersey
  Non-Presenting Author

• Sally Atkins-Burnett, Mathematica
  Non-Presenting Author