The overarching questions motivating the proposed research are: """"""""What are the pathways for healthy development in children?""""""""; and """"""""What is the role of parental education in pathways to child health?"""""""" Previous research appears to lack an articulation of a model of the antecedents and intervening mechanisms leading to child health and well-being. Building on the existing literature that has focused primarily on single pathways to child health, this project will develop and estimate a detailed model, highlighting the critical, multiple pathways to child health and well-being. Specifically, this project will examine the pathways through which parental education may influence children's healthy development. The pathways include a series of mediating factors, some of which are child-specific, such as parenting practices and childcare arrangements; others are elements of the larger family environment, such as family employment patterns. These pathways will be examined across important subgroups such as racial/ethnic minorities and children with a chronic illness or disability. The proposed study will utilize two new nationally representative samples of children conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics: the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study - Birth Cohort (ECLS-B) and the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study - Kindergarten Class of 1998-99 (ECLS-K). The proposed research will proceed in four phases. Phase I will focus on the bivariate relationships between parental education, perinatal characteristics and behaviors, characteristics of the child-specific and family environments, and children's health and well being at birth, as an infant, as a toddler, at kindergarten entry, and in early elementary school. Phase II will examine the possible pathways through which parental education may be related to children's health status at each timepoint. Specifically, perinatal mediators for a healthy child at birth, as well as childhood mediators of the child-specific environment and elements of the family environment, will be examined. Phase III will extend the model to include later developmental outcomes related to health, social behavior, and academic success. During Phase IV of the project, the moderating role of sociodemographic characteristics and children's chronic health status, as well as the potentially important moderating role of parental education, will be examined. Structural equation modeling will be used to address the question for whom and under what circumstances parental education influences child health and well-being.
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| Martin, Laurie T; McNamara, Michelle J; Milot, Alyssa S et al. (2007) The effects of father involvement during pregnancy on receipt of prenatal care and maternal smoking. Matern Child Health J 11:595-602 |
