Family Relations and Child Development
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Bartlett Independent Living Center: An Applied Day Treatment, Education, and Research Partnership
For the last two years, the College of Human Environmental Sciences and Willow View Mental Health System has engaged in a partnership to provide services to the elderly, as well as educational and research opportunities for gerontology students. Willow View provides clinical services for the elderly and houses its Reflections Day Treatment Program in the Bartlett Independent Living Center. This facility creates an on-campus center that is accessible to older adults with mental and physical disabilities. Over 30 elderly clients have participated in Adult Day Treatment since the programs' inception. Assistantships have been provided for graduate and undergraduate students. Numerous graduate and undergraduate students have included the Bartlett Center experience as part of their internship, creative component, and thesis requirements.
Sponsor: Willow View Mental Health Systems
PIs: Joseph A. Weber and Gladeen Allred (College of Education)
Career Exploration of Adolescent and Young Adult Daughters: Comparison of Socialization by Mothers and Fathers
The purpose of the current study was to examine how mothers and fathers influence their daughters' decisions about careers. Two questionnaires assessing Socialization by mothers or fathers and two assessing Identification with mothers or fathers were developed and administered to 255 undergraduate females, 148 of whom were included in the study because their parents were still married to each other. The results show that mothers and fathers influence different aspects of their daughters' career decision making. Maternal socialization and identification predicted daughters' decisiveness about careers. Increases in discussion with mothers were accompanied by increases in daughters' decisiveness, and vice versa. In contrast, as daughters' desire to imitate or surpass their mother's social status increased, so did the likelihood of being indecisive. Paternal socialization and identification predicted daughters' inflexibility and stubbornness in career decision making. As daughters' desires to imitate their fathers' beliefs and relationships increased, inflexibility in career decisions decreased. In contrast, as discussions with fathers about careers increased, so did daughters' stubbornness and inflexibility in career decision making. These results not only underscore important differences between mothers' and fathers' influence on daughters, but they also suggest that desire to imitate parental relationships and beliefs is associated with mature career decision making whereas desire to imitate parents' material success and status is not.
Sponsor: John and Sue Taylor Professorship
PI: Laura Hubbs-Tait
Child Sexual Abuse: Multiple Perspectives of Family Dynamics
This ongoing longitudinal project is designed to expand the knowledge base of family characteristics of intrafamilial and extrafamilial child sexual abuse victims. This study focuses on multiple prospective views of family dynamics of sexually abused children. This study will help to identify which children are at risk of being denied parental support, what factors lead to parental acceptance and rejection, and which antecedents and correlates will predict parental acceptance and rejection on child sexual abuse. Family factors include family cohesion and adaptability, parental support and affection, post-abuse factors, and family structure. Data collection is in progress.
Sponsor: State of Oklahoma
PI: Kathleen Briggs
Family Systems Characteristics and Parental Qualities as Predictors of Adolescent Adaptation
This study investigates the extent to which factors within the overall family system and parent-adolescent dyads predict adolescent adaptation as indicated by satisfaction with family life, substance use patterns, and self-esteem. Data were collected from a sample of 488 adolescents in four Oklahoma communities. Although previous research tends to examine overall family systems characteristics and parental behaviors in relation to adolescent well-being, the current study examines how the combination of factors at these two system levels relate to adolescent well-being.
Sponsor: Oklahoma Agricultural Experiment Station
PI: Carolyn Henry and Linda Robinson
First Time Parents and Parent Education: Community-Based Programs to Decrease the Rate of Child Maltreatment
Adolescent and nonadolescent mothers enrolled in an early intervention program which consisted of weekly home visits made by trained and supervised paraprofessionals who taught mothers parenting skills, child development and linked mothers to community services. The participants ages ranged from 14 to 36 years while the mean age was 18.5 years; 71 percent were Caucasian; 15 percent were Native American; and 8 percent were African American. Most were unemployed and poor. Currently, after six months of intervention, 55 mothers have completed assessments, and after 12 months of intervention, 30 mothers have completed assessments. Significant differences were made in adolescent mothers as well as nonadolescent mothers in the areas of empathic understanding of children's needs, the roles of a parent as separate from and different from the needs of the child in the family, their knowledge of infant development and after 12 months, their knowledge of toddler development. In addition, their use of community resources increased and then stabilized over time. The mothers significantly improved the safety of their homes and maintained the new level of safety after one year. Compared to nonadolescent mothers, adolescent mothers began the program with less knowledge about parenting and child development, and they took longer to incorporate this information. This program is a cost effective approach that reduces the long term cost, both finance and social, on society, as well as families with infants.
Sponsor: State of Oklahoma, Oklahoma State Department of Health, USDA, and Oklahoma State Cooperative Extension Service
PIs: Anne McDonald Culp, Rex E. Culp, M. Blankemeyer, and Linda Passmark
Grandparent-Grandchild Relationships
Grandparents in America can engender family continuity and intergenerational bonds. Results from qualitative research illustrate the importance of the grandparent-grandchild relationship. Grandparenting roles are continually evolving and changing as life expectancy increases and family relationship patterns become extremely diverse and complex. Differences in grandparenting styles and roles among different culture/ethnic groups and the specific contributions grandfathers have made to family continuity and helping successive generations have emerged as research priorities. Previous research has shown that grandparents want to be personally involved and influential in the lives of their grandchildren. Continued research on grandfathers will identify the developmental changes and sequences occurring as men begin to incorporate the grandfather role into their life cycle framework.
Sponsor: State of Oklahoma
PI: Joseph A. Weber
How Children and Their Families Adjust to Preschool
Ninety-four mothers of four-year-old children completed questionnaires in the Fall of 1995 about parenting attitudes. In the Spring of 1996, 66 mothers and their children participated in a videotaped boat-building task. The mothers also completed an assessment of parenting developed by the research team: the Computer-Presented Parenting Dilemmas. The parenting dilemmas include stories about three types of child behavior: child misbehavior, child distress, and peer interaction. The computer program is interactive. The mother indicates for each of the hypothetical behaviors exhibited by her four-year-old child how she would respond. Preliminary results suggest that maternal responses to their four-year-olds' play with friends can be divided into two positive and two negative categories. The two categories of positive parental monitoring are "Periodic Checking from a Distance" and "Watching and Praising" (i.e., when they are playing positively and constructively). The two categories of negative parental monitoring are "Intrusive Participation" (i.e., making the children play with the parent) and "Ignoring." The relationship of these four categories of peer monitoring to children's adjustment to their preschool peers is currently being examined.
Sponsor: National Institutes of Health
PI: Laura Hubbs-Tait, Anne Culp, and Rex Culp
Inherited Personality Traits
This research assessed the relationship among three predictors: number and maltreatment reports, sibling characteristics, and caregiver characteristics and one criterion: maltreated children's externalizing behaviors. Participants were 36 children (16 females, 20 males; 23 African-American, 13 white; 11 physically abused and neglected, 16 neglected, 9 sexually abused) aged 3 to 5 years of age (m= 4.1 years of age). Externalizing behavior was assessed using the Child Behavior Checklist 2/3, Preschool Behavior Questionnaire, and The Preschool Taxonomy of Problem Situations. Person correction coefficients revealed different patterns of correlation's between the family variables and externalizing behavior by maltreatment group. These findings raise implications for family scientists and practitioners; different maltreatment groups need different intervention strategies. Intervention for maltreated children's externalizing behavior must take into account different family variables associated with each particular externalizing behavior. The dynamics of coregular-child and sibling relationships should be evaluated. Coregular status and sibling characteristics need to be incorporated in research on maltreatment children.
Sponsor: Child Advocacy Service, Inc.
PI: Rex Culp
Relationship of Social, Emotional, and Family Variables to "Risk Status"
This project entails a series of studies of variables that place children at higher risk for deleterious outcomes. One of these studies compared Native American and Caucasian mothers to determine whether maternal depression explained significant variance in parenting practices beyond that explained by ethnicity. Preliminary findings revealed that, after accounting for parenting differences due to ethnicity, maternal depression explained significant variance in mothers' Belief in Physical Punishment, mothers' Inappropriate Expectations, mothers' Lack of Empathy, and mothers' Endorsement of Role Reversal. The more depressed a mother was, the more likely she was to endorse physical punishment of her child, to expect her child's behavior to be several years more mature than the child's own age, to exhibit very little empathy for her child, and to expect her child to take care of the mother's own emotional needs. Results are interpreted as suggesting that depressed mothers' unsuitable expectations for their children's cognitive and emotional development mediate the relationship between maternal depression and children's later socioemotional and cognitive difficulties.
Sponsor: State of Oklahoma, John and Sue Taylor Professorship, National Institute of Mental Health
PI: Laura Hubbs-Tait, Anne McDonald Culp, Rex Culp, and A. Susanne Morse