A number of studies have identified patterns of parenting that are associated with early childhood problems of offspring, including maladaptive temperament traits, aggression, and attachment problems. These early traits are harbingers of more frank mental disorder in later childhood. Recent investigations of the parenting-offspring temperament connection have suggested that these relationships come about from multiple influences, including reciprocal causation or feedback, and probably common genetic and cultural influences as well. The proposed study takes advantage of a large longitudinal data base to add information uniquely useful for making these distinctions in a three generational design. Data gathered since childhood on a large general population sample of children are to be used in models estimating the influences on parenting and child rearing practices used with their offspring, and the origins of the relationships between offspring temperament and parenting variations. The longitudinal follow-up of the parents and offspring over the transition year from infancy to early childhood (9 to 24 months) will allow the development of models in which the relative magnitude of various influences on these relationships can be estimated and tested. Comparisons of such effects in first-born nd second-born children from the same families, assessed at fixed ages of the offspring, will permit tests of hypotheses regarding the origins of within-family differences in parenting and offspring temperament. Biological markers will be examined for consistency with the theoretically proposed dimensions of temperament.
| Leckman-Westin, Emily; Cohen, Patricia R; Stueve, Ann (2009) Maternal depression and mother-child interaction patterns: association with toddler problems and continuity of effects to late childhood. J Child Psychol Psychiatry 50:1176-84 |
| Brown, J; Cohen, P; Johnson, J G et al. (1999) Childhood abuse and neglect: specificity of effects on adolescent and young adult depression and suicidality. J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry 38:1490-6 |
| Brown, J; Cohen, P; Johnson, J G et al. (1998) A longitudinal analysis of risk factors for child maltreatment: findings of a 17-year prospective study of officially recorded and self-reported child abuse and neglect. Child Abuse Negl 22:1065-78 |
