There is considerable evidence that the detrimental effects of poverty and environmental deprivation on children are mediated through maternal psychosocial adaptation and parenting behavior in the early years. Thus, in high risk groups, maternal depressive symptoms and maladaptive parenting attitudes are related to vulnerability for a variety of poor infant outcomes. However, across socioeconomic and cultural groups, social support has been found to be a powerful moderator of maternal psychosocial functioning, and thereby a buffer to risk for children. Native Americans are an impoverished group afflicted with one of the most severe neurodevelopmental disorders of infancy, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), which reaches its highest prevalence in the nation, and which is related to material risk behaviors. We believe that SIDS may be the extreme of a spectrum of neurobheavioral delay and dysfunction in infants mediated by maternal risk behaviors. The proposed studies would investigate prevalence and associations among maternal depression, parenting attitudes and social support, and the effects of these on infant neurobehavioral risk in a group of rural, Native American mothers. Infants of these mothers will be enrolled in a prospective study of neural and cardiorespiratory factors in SIDS (""""""""Perinatal Assessments in risk Populations"""""""", HD32774, William P. Fifer, P.I.). In addition, the proposed study would determine prevalence rates of infant cognitive and neurobehavioral developmental delay at one year as a developmental outcome measure.
