This study tested a model of children's emotionality as a moderator of the links between maternal... more This study tested a model of children's emotionality as a moderator of the links between maternal emotion socialization and depressive symptoms and child emotion regulation. Participants were 128 mother-preschooler dyads. Child emotion expression and emotion regulation strategies were assessed observationally during a disappointment task, and a principal component analysis revealed three factors: passive soothing (including sadness and comfort seeking), negative focus on distress (including anger, focus on distress and low active distraction) and positive engagement (including positive emotion, active play and passive waiting, which was loaded negatively). Hierarchical linear regression models revealed that child positive emotionality (PE) and negative emotionality (NE) moderated the links between maternal support/positive emotion expression and child emotion regulation strategies. In particular, children's low PE exacerbated the association between lack of maternal support and child passive soothing, whereas high PE enhanced the association between maternal positive expression and reduced negative focus on distress. Furthermore, the associations of mothers' support and reduced passive soothing and negative focus on distress, as well as the association between mothers' positive expression and child positive engagement, were stronger for children with low levels of NE, compared with those with average and high levels of NE. Findings partially support a diathesis-stress model in understanding the effects of both child characteristics and the familial influence on child emotion regulation.
Studies report that high rates of prostituting women seek substance use treatment, and that most ... more Studies report that high rates of prostituting women seek substance use treatment, and that most of these women have children in their care. However, compared to non-prostituting women, they show poorer treatment outcomes. Effective intervention for this population is needed, and the current study is the first to test family therapy with mothers seeking substance use treatment, who also reported prostitution. Sixty-eight treatment-seeking women with children in their care were randomly assigned to receive twelve sessions of Ecologically-Based Family Therapy or twelve sessions of individual treatment. Results showed that women who received family therapy reported greater reductions in substance use and depressive symptoms as well as greater improvements in their mother-child interactions. Findings underscore the importance of offering family therapy as a treatment option when prostituting women with children seek substance use treatment.
Suicidal thoughts and behaviors are common among women with a substance use disorder (SUD). Addit... more Suicidal thoughts and behaviors are common among women with a substance use disorder (SUD). Additionally, a significant number of women substance users have children in their care. While the negative impact of maternal substance use on child outcomes has been documented, little is known about how the co-occurrence of suicidal ideation influences child outcomes. The current study examined the relationship between parenting behaviors and child outcomes in a sample of 183 treatment seeking women with a SUD who had a child in their care. Findings showed that maternal autonomy promotion, maternal acceptance and parental monitoring were associated with decreased child behavior problems. However, the presence of maternal suicidal ideation presented unique risk in which children generally did not benefit from positive parenting behaviors. The findings imply that children of suicidal mothers who also have a SUD could benefit from different parenting strategies than children of mothers who are not suicidal. This study suggests that suicidal ideation is a unique risk factor that should be addressed with both mothers and children when mothers seek substance use treatment.
This study tested a sequential mediation model that emotion-oriented coping and motivation for ch... more This study tested a sequential mediation model that emotion-oriented coping and motivation for change mediate the relations between anxiety and depressive symptoms and the change in substance use. Data included 183 substance using women, randomly assigned to family therapy (N = 123) or individual therapy (N = 60). They reported their baseline anxiety and depressive symptoms, emotion-oriented coping, as well as motivation for change throughout treatment, and substance use over a time period of 1.5 years. Latent growth curve modeling showed that increased baseline motivation was associated with a faster decline in alcohol and drug use. Moreover, higher baseline anxiety and depressive symptoms were associated with a faster decrease in drug use through higher emotion-oriented coping and higher baseline motivation. This study underscores the importance of emotion-oriented coping in increasing clients' motivation and reducing their drug use.
Mothers' emotion socialization practices are very important for children's later outcomes; howeve... more Mothers' emotion socialization practices are very important for children's later outcomes; however, we know very little about how these practices may lead to different outcomes for European American (EA) and African American (AA) children. In the current study, maternal emotion socialization practices were investigated in relation to child emotion-related outcomes in 122 pairs of mothers and preschool-age children, and differences in associations were examined for EA and AA families. Mothers were assessed for their expressions of positive emotion with their child and their responses to their child's negative emotions, including support of sadness/fear and magnification of anger, when children were 3. Children were assessed for their expression of positive emotion with their mother and their internalizing and externalizing problem behaviors when they were 4. When ethnicity was included as a moderator, results revealed that when AA mothers expressed more positive emotion, their children were also more positive 1 year later. Additionally, as AA mothers provided greater support for their children's sadness/fear, these children tended to have fewer later internalizing problems. Finally, when AA mothers responded with more magnification of their children's anger, these children tended to have greater internalizing and externalizing problems 1 year later. These associations were not found for EA families. Results highlighted differential effects based on the type of support provided by mothers and the role that mothers played in encouraging or suppressing their child's expressions. The overall findings highlight the need to consider maternal emotion socialization from a culturally-informed perspective.
Intimate partner violence (IPV) is prevalent in the United States, and many women who experience ... more Intimate partner violence (IPV) is prevalent in the United States, and many women who experience IPV have children in their care. Substance use is common among this population and affects parenting behaviors such as maternal acceptance and child outcomes. Maternal experience of IPV affects a mother's ability to parent and interact with her child. Little is known about the combined influence of both maternal substance use and IPV on parenting behaviors and child problem behaviors. The current study examined differences in maternal acceptance and child internalizing and externalizing behaviors among mothers who reported experiencing IPV to mothers who never reported experiencing IPV. Results showed that mothers with a history of IPV reported lower rates of maternal acceptance and higher rates of child problem behaviors compared with those with no history of IPV. In addition, frequency of substance use moderated this relationship. This is the first study, to date, to examine the relationship between maternal acceptance and child problem behaviors among substance using mothers with a history of IPV and is a first step to understanding the parenting practices of this population.
This article tested a model of parenting stress as a mediator between maternal depressive symptom... more This article tested a model of parenting stress as a mediator between maternal depressive symptoms, emotion regulation, and child behavior problems using a sample of homeless, substance-abusing mothers. Participants were 119 homeless mothers (ages 18-24 years) and their young children (ages 0-6 years). Mothers responded to questions about their depressive symptoms, emotion regulation, parenting stress, and child behavior problems. A path analysis showed that maternal depressive symptoms were positively associated with child behavior problems through increased parenting stress whereas maternal cognitive reappraisal was negatively associated with child behavior problems through decreased parenting stress. Moreover, maternal expressive suppression was negatively related to child externalizing problems. Findings support the parenting stress theory and highlight maternal parenting stress as a mechanism associated with homeless children's mental health risk. This study has significant implications for understanding the parenting processes underlying child's resilience in the context of homelessness and maternal substance use.
Rationale: Food insecurity is a significant social problem that has been found to co-occur with b... more Rationale: Food insecurity is a significant social problem that has been found to co-occur with both poverty and depression. However, few studies have utilized longitudinal data to investigate the associations among poverty, depression, and food insecurity. Objective: This study tested two competing hypotheses, the food inadequacy hypothesis and the mental health hypothesis, in examining the associations among family socioeconomic status (SES), maternal depression, and household food insecurity across children's first five years of life. Methods: Data were drawn from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort (ECLS-B), a dataset nationally representative of all children born in the United States in 2001. Mothers reported family SES and household food insecurity when their children were nine months, 24 months, four years, and at kindergarten entry; maternal self-rated depressive symptoms were included at nine months, four years, and kindergarten entry. Results: An autoregressive cross-lagged model showed that family SES was predictive of later household food insecurity, which in turn was associated with later maternal depressive symptoms. Significant mediation pathways were found with household food insecurity mediating the link between family SES and maternal depressive symptoms. Conclusions: This study highlights the need to consider household food insecurity as an underlying mechanism of maternal depressive symptoms in under-resourced families. Findings of this study can inform public health policy by highlighting the importance of considering factors such as food insecurity in the delivery of services to depressed mothers and their children in under-resourced contexts, and emphasizing the need for coordinated, integrated care in responding to the needs of these high-risk, vulnerable families.
This study examined a model of children's emotion expression as a moderator of the links between ... more This study examined a model of children's emotion expression as a moderator of the links between mothers' depressive symptoms and their responses to children's negative emotions. Participants were 127 mother-preschooler dyads. Children's emotion expressions were assessed both by maternal report and through observational tasks when children were three. Mothers were assessed for their depressive symptoms when children were three, and their responses to their children's negative emotions, when children were four. Results revealed that when children's reported submissive emotion expression was low, maternal depressive symptoms were related to lower maternal support; whereas, when children's reported submissive emotion was high, maternal depressive symptoms were associated with higher support. Moreover, when children's observed disharmonious emotion expression was low, maternal depressive symptoms were associated with lower maternal magnifying responses. This study enhances our understanding of the interaction between maternal depressive symptoms and child emotional characteristics in contributing to maternal emotion socialization practices.
This study examined the associations among maternal history of childhood abuse, substance use, an... more This study examined the associations among maternal history of childhood abuse, substance use, and depressive symptoms and the change in children's depressive symptoms in therapy. Mothers (N = 183) were randomly assigned into either a family or an individual treatment condition. Mothers were assessed for their childhood abuse retrospectively, baseline depres-sive symptoms, and substance use, whereas their children's depressive symptoms were measured five times during 1.5 years. Maternal childhood abuse was associated with a slower decline in child depressive symptoms through elevated maternal depressive symptoms, only in individual treatment. Maternal substance use further moderated this mediation pathway. This study supports the efficacy of family therapy in protecting children of mothers with a substance use disorder and a history of childhood abuse.
This study tested a model of children's emotionality as a moderator of the links between maternal... more This study tested a model of children's emotionality as a moderator of the links between maternal emotion socialization and depressive symptoms and child emotion regulation. Participants were 128 mother-preschooler dyads. Child emotion expression and emotion regulation strategies were assessed observationally during a disappointment task, and a principal component analysis revealed three factors: passive soothing (including sadness and comfort seeking), negative focus on distress (including anger, focus on distress and low active distraction) and positive engagement (including positive emotion, active play and passive waiting, which was loaded negatively). Hierarchical linear regression models revealed that child positive emotionality (PE) and negative emotionality (NE) moderated the links between maternal support/positive emotion expression and child emotion regulation strategies. In particular, children's low PE exacerbated the association between lack of maternal support and child passive soothing, whereas high PE enhanced the association between maternal positive expression and reduced negative focus on distress. Furthermore, the associations of mothers' support and reduced passive soothing and negative focus on distress, as well as the association between mothers' positive expression and child positive engagement, were stronger for children with low levels of NE, compared with those with average and high levels of NE. Findings partially support a diathesis-stress model in understanding the effects of both child characteristics and the familial influence on child emotion regulation.
Studies report that high rates of prostituting women seek substance use treatment, and that most ... more Studies report that high rates of prostituting women seek substance use treatment, and that most of these women have children in their care. However, compared to non-prostituting women, they show poorer treatment outcomes. Effective intervention for this population is needed, and the current study is the first to test family therapy with mothers seeking substance use treatment, who also reported prostitution. Sixty-eight treatment-seeking women with children in their care were randomly assigned to receive twelve sessions of Ecologically-Based Family Therapy or twelve sessions of individual treatment. Results showed that women who received family therapy reported greater reductions in substance use and depressive symptoms as well as greater improvements in their mother-child interactions. Findings underscore the importance of offering family therapy as a treatment option when prostituting women with children seek substance use treatment.
Suicidal thoughts and behaviors are common among women with a substance use disorder (SUD). Addit... more Suicidal thoughts and behaviors are common among women with a substance use disorder (SUD). Additionally, a significant number of women substance users have children in their care. While the negative impact of maternal substance use on child outcomes has been documented, little is known about how the co-occurrence of suicidal ideation influences child outcomes. The current study examined the relationship between parenting behaviors and child outcomes in a sample of 183 treatment seeking women with a SUD who had a child in their care. Findings showed that maternal autonomy promotion, maternal acceptance and parental monitoring were associated with decreased child behavior problems. However, the presence of maternal suicidal ideation presented unique risk in which children generally did not benefit from positive parenting behaviors. The findings imply that children of suicidal mothers who also have a SUD could benefit from different parenting strategies than children of mothers who are not suicidal. This study suggests that suicidal ideation is a unique risk factor that should be addressed with both mothers and children when mothers seek substance use treatment.
This study tested a sequential mediation model that emotion-oriented coping and motivation for ch... more This study tested a sequential mediation model that emotion-oriented coping and motivation for change mediate the relations between anxiety and depressive symptoms and the change in substance use. Data included 183 substance using women, randomly assigned to family therapy (N = 123) or individual therapy (N = 60). They reported their baseline anxiety and depressive symptoms, emotion-oriented coping, as well as motivation for change throughout treatment, and substance use over a time period of 1.5 years. Latent growth curve modeling showed that increased baseline motivation was associated with a faster decline in alcohol and drug use. Moreover, higher baseline anxiety and depressive symptoms were associated with a faster decrease in drug use through higher emotion-oriented coping and higher baseline motivation. This study underscores the importance of emotion-oriented coping in increasing clients' motivation and reducing their drug use.
Mothers' emotion socialization practices are very important for children's later outcomes; howeve... more Mothers' emotion socialization practices are very important for children's later outcomes; however, we know very little about how these practices may lead to different outcomes for European American (EA) and African American (AA) children. In the current study, maternal emotion socialization practices were investigated in relation to child emotion-related outcomes in 122 pairs of mothers and preschool-age children, and differences in associations were examined for EA and AA families. Mothers were assessed for their expressions of positive emotion with their child and their responses to their child's negative emotions, including support of sadness/fear and magnification of anger, when children were 3. Children were assessed for their expression of positive emotion with their mother and their internalizing and externalizing problem behaviors when they were 4. When ethnicity was included as a moderator, results revealed that when AA mothers expressed more positive emotion, their children were also more positive 1 year later. Additionally, as AA mothers provided greater support for their children's sadness/fear, these children tended to have fewer later internalizing problems. Finally, when AA mothers responded with more magnification of their children's anger, these children tended to have greater internalizing and externalizing problems 1 year later. These associations were not found for EA families. Results highlighted differential effects based on the type of support provided by mothers and the role that mothers played in encouraging or suppressing their child's expressions. The overall findings highlight the need to consider maternal emotion socialization from a culturally-informed perspective.
Intimate partner violence (IPV) is prevalent in the United States, and many women who experience ... more Intimate partner violence (IPV) is prevalent in the United States, and many women who experience IPV have children in their care. Substance use is common among this population and affects parenting behaviors such as maternal acceptance and child outcomes. Maternal experience of IPV affects a mother's ability to parent and interact with her child. Little is known about the combined influence of both maternal substance use and IPV on parenting behaviors and child problem behaviors. The current study examined differences in maternal acceptance and child internalizing and externalizing behaviors among mothers who reported experiencing IPV to mothers who never reported experiencing IPV. Results showed that mothers with a history of IPV reported lower rates of maternal acceptance and higher rates of child problem behaviors compared with those with no history of IPV. In addition, frequency of substance use moderated this relationship. This is the first study, to date, to examine the relationship between maternal acceptance and child problem behaviors among substance using mothers with a history of IPV and is a first step to understanding the parenting practices of this population.
This article tested a model of parenting stress as a mediator between maternal depressive symptom... more This article tested a model of parenting stress as a mediator between maternal depressive symptoms, emotion regulation, and child behavior problems using a sample of homeless, substance-abusing mothers. Participants were 119 homeless mothers (ages 18-24 years) and their young children (ages 0-6 years). Mothers responded to questions about their depressive symptoms, emotion regulation, parenting stress, and child behavior problems. A path analysis showed that maternal depressive symptoms were positively associated with child behavior problems through increased parenting stress whereas maternal cognitive reappraisal was negatively associated with child behavior problems through decreased parenting stress. Moreover, maternal expressive suppression was negatively related to child externalizing problems. Findings support the parenting stress theory and highlight maternal parenting stress as a mechanism associated with homeless children's mental health risk. This study has significant implications for understanding the parenting processes underlying child's resilience in the context of homelessness and maternal substance use.
Rationale: Food insecurity is a significant social problem that has been found to co-occur with b... more Rationale: Food insecurity is a significant social problem that has been found to co-occur with both poverty and depression. However, few studies have utilized longitudinal data to investigate the associations among poverty, depression, and food insecurity. Objective: This study tested two competing hypotheses, the food inadequacy hypothesis and the mental health hypothesis, in examining the associations among family socioeconomic status (SES), maternal depression, and household food insecurity across children's first five years of life. Methods: Data were drawn from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort (ECLS-B), a dataset nationally representative of all children born in the United States in 2001. Mothers reported family SES and household food insecurity when their children were nine months, 24 months, four years, and at kindergarten entry; maternal self-rated depressive symptoms were included at nine months, four years, and kindergarten entry. Results: An autoregressive cross-lagged model showed that family SES was predictive of later household food insecurity, which in turn was associated with later maternal depressive symptoms. Significant mediation pathways were found with household food insecurity mediating the link between family SES and maternal depressive symptoms. Conclusions: This study highlights the need to consider household food insecurity as an underlying mechanism of maternal depressive symptoms in under-resourced families. Findings of this study can inform public health policy by highlighting the importance of considering factors such as food insecurity in the delivery of services to depressed mothers and their children in under-resourced contexts, and emphasizing the need for coordinated, integrated care in responding to the needs of these high-risk, vulnerable families.
This study examined a model of children's emotion expression as a moderator of the links between ... more This study examined a model of children's emotion expression as a moderator of the links between mothers' depressive symptoms and their responses to children's negative emotions. Participants were 127 mother-preschooler dyads. Children's emotion expressions were assessed both by maternal report and through observational tasks when children were three. Mothers were assessed for their depressive symptoms when children were three, and their responses to their children's negative emotions, when children were four. Results revealed that when children's reported submissive emotion expression was low, maternal depressive symptoms were related to lower maternal support; whereas, when children's reported submissive emotion was high, maternal depressive symptoms were associated with higher support. Moreover, when children's observed disharmonious emotion expression was low, maternal depressive symptoms were associated with lower maternal magnifying responses. This study enhances our understanding of the interaction between maternal depressive symptoms and child emotional characteristics in contributing to maternal emotion socialization practices.
This study examined the associations among maternal history of childhood abuse, substance use, an... more This study examined the associations among maternal history of childhood abuse, substance use, and depressive symptoms and the change in children's depressive symptoms in therapy. Mothers (N = 183) were randomly assigned into either a family or an individual treatment condition. Mothers were assessed for their childhood abuse retrospectively, baseline depres-sive symptoms, and substance use, whereas their children's depressive symptoms were measured five times during 1.5 years. Maternal childhood abuse was associated with a slower decline in child depressive symptoms through elevated maternal depressive symptoms, only in individual treatment. Maternal substance use further moderated this mediation pathway. This study supports the efficacy of family therapy in protecting children of mothers with a substance use disorder and a history of childhood abuse.
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