Interviews with Children Who Experienced Major Life Stress: Family and Child Attributes that Predict Resilient Outcomes (original) (raw)
Related papers
Journal of Community Psychology, 2001
Microanalyzed global parent interview variables that had previously differentiated stress-resilient (SR) and stress-affected (SA) outcomes in independent samples (4th-6th and 2nd-3rd grade) of multiethnic, highly stressed, urban children. The in-depth interview assessed caregiving environment and early child development. On item-level t tests for the pooled sample, 36 of 144 items differentiated the groups. Discriminant function analysis identified a cluster of nine sensitive items that correctly classified 81.7% of children as SR or SA. Factor analysis of the 36 items identified a 4-factor solution: Child Adjustment, Early Temperament, Parent-Child Relationship, and Developmental Milestones; SR parents exceeded SAs on each. Structurally comparable analyses using only Sample 2 and including the second interview's new measures, replicated and extended findings from the pooled sample. Overall, study findings enhance understanding of resilience and testify to the merit of using a microanalytic approach in this research area. Implications for streamlining existing measures and for future research directions are considered.
Family Relationships and Children's Stress Responses
Advances in Child Development and Behavior, 2011
In this chapter, the theoretical and empirical associations between family relationships and children's responses to stressors are reviewed. Family relationships explored are primarily dyadic, representing the emphasis of past empirical research; these include parent-parent, parent-child, and sibling relationships. However, in recognition of the more complicated and interconnected nature of family relationships, also reviewed are associations between the broader family context and children's stress responses. Multiple measures of stress responses are considered, including both physiological and emotional responses to and recovery from stressful experiences. Overall, the studies reviewed suggest that poor-quality family environments, including those characterized by low emotional support or high conflict, are associated with dysregulated stress responses throughout childhood and adolescence. In contrast, children and adolescents in families with high emotional support or low conflict seem to be protected from developing stress regulatory problems. Limitations in this body of research as well as directions for future research are discussed.
Psychological foundations of stress and coping: A developmental perspective
This paper represents an attempt to achieve some synthesis across a range of theoretical perspectives whose goals are, among others, to predict how individuals are likely to cope with stressors. The paper takes a developmental perspective, and searches for the keys to coping capacity within the context of the earliest relationships with primary caregivers. Theories of attachment, human development, personality, and psychopathology each contribute both theory and research to our understanding of risk and resilience, and these perspectives are linked to theories of stress and coping, and life events research via key concepts that occur across each discipline. A model is offered that proposes that the quality of attachment, which infl uences the development of either adequate or inadequate object relations, (ie internal working models or mental representations of relationships) is the key resource upon which the development of other resources depends. It is argued that "good enough" attachment is necessary but not suffi cient for adequate coping, and that both personality and psychopathology represent the outcomes of developmental, attachment, and coping experiences that can either intensify or reduce the risk of adverse consequences. The model is transgenerational, in that vulnerable and resilient children transfer their attachment and coping experiences, via their internal working models, into their parenting of the next generation of children.
Parenting Stress and Resilience
Background: This paper aimed to review the literature on the factors associated with parenting stress and resilience among parents of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in the South East Asia (SEA) region.
Family stressors and children's outcomes
2013
The research reported here aimed to identify the family stress factors and parental behaviours that were associated with worse children's outcomes at age 7 and those family factors and parental behaviour that helped children to succeed. It also set out to identify whether stressful life events experienced at different periods of childhood were associated with worse outcomes in adolescence. In order to target interventions, it is clearly important to understand which family circumstances are significant for child wellbeing at different ages, and how that varies across outcomes. A range of children's outcomes were examined using data from the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS) and the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC). At age 7, these were verbal cognitive skills, non-verbal cognitive skills, maths skills, Key Stage 1 (KS1) attainment and behavioural difficulties. For teenagers, the following outcomes were explored at age 13-14: Key stage 3 (KS3) attainment; emotional, behavioural, social, and school wellbeing; and Key Stage 4 (KS4) results at age 16. Key findings A wide range of family background factors and parental behaviours are associated with children's outcomes at age 7. These tend to be the same factors that are important at earlier ages, and include parenting behaviours, family structure and socioeconomic position of the family. Family poverty, child disability and the child's mother having higher qualifications are consistently associated with children faring respectively worse (poverty and disability) and better (higher maternal qualifications) across all five age 7 outcomes, holding other factors constant. Different aspects of family background matter for different outcomes. Children can experience a range of stressful life events. Extreme stressful events, such as homelessness, victimisation or abuse, can have long-term effects on children's outcomes. Some stressful events impact on children's emotional and social wellbeing but not their educational outcomes: their negative impacts may thus be harder to pick up. Children are very varied and they can show great resilience. Even given the associations between early circumstances and subsequent outcomes, children perform very differently across a wide range of cognitive and behavioural outcomes. There is little evidence, however, that any positive parental behaviours have more impact in disadvantaged families, reducing the relative effect of that disadvantage.
Stress and Coping as Predictors of Young Children's Development and Psychosocial Adjustment
1991
A total of 38 children of 5-6 years in one of four early childhood or kindergarten programs participated in a study of the predictive relationship of stress and coping to development and psychosocial adjustment. Measures of independent variables included the Life Events Scale for Children, Family Invulnerability Test, Hassles Scale for Children, Analysis of Coping Style, and Chandler's Stress Response Scale. Measures of the dependent variables were the Developmental Profile II, Battelle Development Inventory, the observational form of Achenbach's Child Behavior Checklist, Child Behavior Rating Scale, Child and Adolescent Adjustment Profile, and the California Preschool Social Competence Scale. Individual coping styles were the most significant predictors of development and psychosocial adjustment, followed by a number of family variables. Although stressful life events were predictive of children's social development and more significant than daily hassles as an independent variable, they were generally unrelated to adjustment and other areas of development. Findings indicated that situational, personal, and family characteristics were all predictive of certain areas of children's development and adjustment, thus providing further evidence that factors associated with resilienly and vulnerability are multifaceted. (Author/RH)
Stressful family lives: Child and parent well-being
PsycEXTRA Dataset, 2000
tressful events and life circumstances can have adverse physical and psychological effects on children and adolescents (Compas 1987; Garmezy 1983; Johnson 1986). Moreover, poverty, health problems, and other economic and personal concerns can pose significant challenges to parents (McLoyd 1990). When parents are preoccupied with stressful circumstances, they may be less able to provide optimal home environments for their children and, when overwhelmed, may even become harsh or coercive toward their children (Cole and Cole 1993). At worst, stress in families can contribute to violent or abusive environments (Strauss, Gelles, and Steinmetz 1980). To assess the level of family stress that a child experiences, several questions from the National Survey of America's Families (NSAF) were combined to create a family stress index. The measure assigns one point for each of the following six stressful circumstances: THE URBAN INSTITUTE
Correlates of resilient outcomes among highly stressed African-American and White urban children
Journal of Community Psychology, 1999
s Compared test variables that differentiated stress-affected and stress-resilient outcomes within separate subsamples of highly stressed 4th-6th grade urban African-American and White children. Similar variables differentiated resilient and stress affected children in the two racial groups. Key common differentiators associated with resilient outcomes under chronically stressful life conditions included: perceived competence; positive self-views; empathy; and realistic control attributions.