The goal of the proposed research is to understand the social and psychological factors that precipitate various school-related delays in children of teen mothers. Salient characteristics in adolescent mothers, subsequent to and following delivery, have been identified and, in combination with infant and child characteristics, used to predict development during the preschool years, thus setting the stage for predicting later development delays and deficiencies through age 10. The selection of predictor variables (risk factors) has been guided by our conceptual model of adolescent parenting. A central concept in the model - cognitive readiness to parent - reflects maternal knowledge of child development, parenting attitudes, and parenting practices. Readiness to parent has been shown to differentiate adult and adolescent mothers, to mediate the effects of IQ and personal adjustment on teen parenting practices and, when measured prenatally, to predict child development at three years of age. Measures of maternal and child functioning for 110 dyads will be gathered when each child is 8 years of age, and 100 at age 10. The focus is on gathering variables which we believe will be useful for predicting MR, LD, and behavioral dysfunction. Measures of intelligence, learning skills, and socioemotional adjustment were selected as criterion variables, whereas other measures (e.g., intellectual and emotional functioning in the mother) were selected as additional predictor variables. All of the measures gathered at ages 8 and 10 will be considered within the context of data already gathered during pregnancy and infancy as part of a previous grant. Continuity of functioning within maternal and child domains will be assessed and relationships across domains examined from both cross-sectional as well as longitudinal perspectives. The central focus is on tracing and predicting children's intellectual, emotional, and social development based on maternal, child, and social-environmental characteristics. Secondary interests lie in tracing maternal development and.in interrelating maternal and child development. The project's overall aim is to identify the factors that underly a major, and not well understood, problem in the U.S.: The causes of sociocultural developmental delays in children of teen mothers. Although we will conduct cross-sectional analyses, the primary focus will be on the longitudinal aspects of the data. Hierarchical linear modeling (HLM), a recent advance in behavioral statistics, will be used to study average intraindividual changes in the sample over time as well as interindividual differences in change. HLM will enable us to assess both static and dynamic correlates of developmental trajectories. The significance of the project lies in the attempt to unravel the """"""""new morbidity"""""""" phenomenon in a representative sample of adolescent mothers and their children through the use of a multivariate, perspective, longitudinal design.
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