Cumulative Social Risk, Parenting, and Infant Development in Rural Low-Income Communities

Abstract

SynopsisObjective-The extent to which the severity of exposure to social risk is related to parenting and cognitive development in the first 15 months of an infant's life was studied in a representative diverse sample of families in two rural poor regions in the United States.Design-One thousand two hundred ninety-two families were followed for the first 15 months of the infant's life.Results-Evidence supported a pathway from risk severity through maternal sensitivity and warmth, language and learning activities, and maternal language to child outcomes, with the language and learning activities providing the most consistent independent prediction. Race, age, and geographic isolation moderated the associations between risk and different aspects of parenting. Both level and change in maternal engagement, maternal language input, and overall learning environment were related to early cognitive development. Cumulative risk measured as the mean of risk variables was a stronger predictor of parenting and infant development than when measured as the count of risk factors.Conclusion-Severity of risk exposure is negatively related to parenting and to child development for infants as young as 15 months of age. This study provides evidence supporting a pathway from risk severity through parenting to child outcomes and suggests that both initial parenting skills and change in parenting skills during infancy predict infants' cognitive skills. IntroductionFamily poverty and related social risk factors often have been linked to a variety of poor outcomes for young children (Hart & Risley, 1995;Campbell & Ramey, 1994; NICHD Early Child Care Research Network [ECCRN], 2005;Vernon-Feagans, 1996), especially if poverty and its attendant social risks are experienced during infancy (Duncan & Brooks-Gunn, 2000) or in families isolated in a rural setting (Brody & Flor, 1998). Most hypothesized process models include pathways from poverty and attendant risks through proximal parenting processes to child outcomes to explain why poverty impacts children's development (Sameroff & Fiese, 2000); however, this work has not identified specific aspects of parenting that serve as mediators. The current study was designed to address four issues relating exposure to social Copyright of Parenting: Science & Practice is the property of Lawrence Erlbaum Associates and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. NIH Public Access Author ManuscriptParent Sci Pract. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2009 November 16. NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript risk in infancy to different aspects of early parenting and to early cognitive development for infants and their families in rural low-income communities.Cumulative risk models, first proposed by Rutter (1979) and Garmezy, Masten, and Tellegen (1984), were developed to take into account the high...

Multiple adverse experiences and child cognitive development

“…These studies show that cognitive outcomes worsen as the number of adversities increases. This gradient has been observed from infancy through adolescence for outcomes of general cognitive ability (8,(21)(22)(23)(24)(25)(26)(27)(28)(29)(30)(31)(32). For executive functioning, this gradient has been observed for attention at ages 3-4 y (33,34), self-regulation at 3 y (35), and delay of gratification at 8-10 y (36).…”

Children’s Exposure to Violence and the Intersection Between Delinquency and Victimization

“…[32] Poorer quality parent-child interactions, in turn, have been associated with depressed child cognitive development. [24,33] Trauma-induced psychological symptoms (e.g., posttraumatic stress disorder [PTSD]) may contribute to cognitive deficits by impeding the ability to engage the environment effectively and learn new skills. [3] Some studies have found that neural/cognitive effects from trauma exposure are evident only among participants with PTSD, whereas others have documented effects regardless of psychiatric status.…”

Accumulation of Risk and Promotive Factors Among Young Children in US Military Families

“…Sameroff and others (Sameroff, Seifer, Barocas, Zax & Greenspan, 1987), for example, have found that the presence of risk factors significantly increases the probability of negative outcomes. Additive relationships between risk factors and children's outcomes have been found in studies examining infants' development (Burchinal, Vernon-Feagans & Cox, 2008), parenting and temperament in toddlers (Popp, Spinrad & Smith, 2008), and violent behaviors among adolescents . Evidence also suggests that accumulations of risk beginning in childhood may have longlasting consequences, as demonstrated in a longitudinal study of children with depressive and anxiety disorders (Stansfeld, Clark, Rodgers, Caldwell & Power, 2011).…”