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Establishing causal links when experiments are not feasible is an important challenge for psychology researchers. The question of whether parents’ spanking causes children’s externalizing behavior problems poses such a challenge because randomized experiments of spanking are unethical, and correlational studies cannot rule out potential selection factors. This study used propensity score matching based on the lifetime prevalence and recent incidence of spanking in a large and nationally representative sample (N = 12,112) as well as lagged dependent variables to get as close to causal estimates outside an experiment as possible. Whether children were spanked at the age of 5 years predicted increases in externalizing behavior problems by ages 6 and 8, even after the groups based on spanking prevalence or incidence were matched on a range of sociodemographic, family, and cultural characteristics and children’s initial behavior problems. These statistically rigorous methods yield the conclusion that spanking predicts a deterioration of children’s externalizing behavior over time.

Reuniting children with their families is the preferred outcome of foster care, yet many children reunited with their families reenter foster care. This study examined how parental substance abuse and mental health problems, and the time allotted for reunification, are associated with reentry risk. We used a complete cohort of children who entered the Texas foster care system in fiscal years 2008 and 2009 to identify the risk of foster care reentry within 5 years of reunification using selection‐adjusted multilevel survival analysis. Approximately 16% of reunified children reentered care within 5 years. Substance abuse and mental health problems predicted higher rates of reentry. Reunification after 12 months was associated with increased reentry risk overall, but not among children commonly exempted from federal permanency timelines. Permanency guidelines that restrict the length of time to achieve reunification may have the unintended consequence of pushing reunification before maltreatment risks have been resolved.

Despite growing attention to resilience following childhood maltreatment, it remains unclear how the development of resilience unfolds over time among child welfare-involved adolescents. Further, little is known about the immediate and enduring effects of two important attachments in children’s lives, namely caregiver–child relationship and deviant peer affiliation, on resilience development over time. This study sought to examine the ways in which caregiver–child relationships and deviant peer affiliation shape developmental trajectories of resilience among child welfare-involved youth. Data were drawn from the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being. Latent growth curve modeling was conducted on a sample of 711 adolescents. The results revealed that adolescents’ resilience increased across a 36-month period since initial contact with Child Protective Services. Better caregiver–child relationships were associated with a higher initial level of resilience among adolescents, whereas higher deviant peer affiliation was associated with a lower initial level of resilience. Significant lagged effects were also found; caregiver–child relationship quality and deviant peer affiliation at baseline were associated with resilience at 18 months after. The findings suggest that interventions that aim to promote positive caregiver–child relationships and prevent deviant peer relationships may help foster resilience among adolescents who have experienced child maltreatment.

In this study, we investigated the interplay of positive work conditions with parenting behaviors across children's first 4 years. Most mothers in the United States are employed in paid work during their children's early years. Research typically has focused on the ways that such employment can conflict with the intensive demands of parenting, but it can also help mothers socially and psychologically during this important period of children's development. Integrating federal survey data on occupational conditions with parenting reports of job flexibility and parenting behaviors from 5,250 mothers in the nationally representative Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort, we estimated how work conditions were associated with stimulating and sensitive parenting and whether these associations were stronger for mothers with lower income. Results of autoregressive modeling demonstrated that job flexibility, opportunities for mastery, and opportunities for connection were positively associated with a composite measure of stimulating and sensitive parenting. Significant interactions indicated that many associations were more pronounced for mothers with lower income. Our results build upon prior work, demonstrating that positive work conditions can support parenting during early childhood and that this is especially true for low-income households. These results bridge the work-family and parenting literatures with important policy implications, such as adopting family-friendly policies within companies.

Sociodemographic disadvantage is a stressor related with unsupportive parenting practices, but little is known about the process by which it may undermine early parental emotion socialization. In the current study, we examined (1) the direct association between sociodemographic risk and supportive emotion socialization and (2) possible indirect effects via psychological distress and mother-oriented cry processing (i.e., negative cognitions about crying) in a short-term 3-wave longitudinal study that followed a stratified sample of 259 first-time mothers from pregnancy through 14-months postpartum. Sociodemographic risk included mothers’ age, education, and income reported by the expectant mothers prenatally. Psychological distress was assessed prior to the 6-month laboratory visit using mothers’ reports on depressive symptoms, difficulty regulating emotions, and trait positive and negative emotions. During the 6-month laboratory visit, mother-oriented cry processing was assessed using a video-recall procedure. Supportive emotion socialization at 14 months was assessed based on observer-rated maternal sensitivity during two distress eliciting tasks and maternal reports. Consistent with prediction, the first indirect pathway from higher sociodemographic disadvantage to lower supportive emotional socialization through higher mother-oriented cry processing was statistically significant, however the second indirect pathway from higher sociodemographic disadvantage to higher psychological distress to higher mother-oriented cry processing to lower supportive emotion socialization was not. Over and above these indirect effects, higher sociodemographic disadvantage was directly associated with lower supportive emotion socialization. Psychological distress was not significantly directly associated with emotion socialization. These findings highlight the importance of policies and interventions that provide financial assistance to the mothers experiencing sociodemographic disadvantage and target their psychological wellbeing. Highlights We employed a multi-method, observational longitudinal design in a racially-diverse sample of 259 mothers. Our findings demonstrated that sociodemographic disadvantage was significantly associated with lower supportive emotion socialization. Findings also suggest an indirect pathway from sociodemographic disadvantage to supportive emotion socialization via psychological distress and through mother-oriented cry processing. Findings suggest the need to provide mothers with resources and financial assistance to alleviate the stressors associated with sociodemographic disadvantage.

Exposure to early risks are linked with less optimal child development across domains. These contextual risks may display various configurations and each configuration could be linked to specific developmental outcomes. Based on 1364 mother–child dyads from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care, this study examined the different risk profiles children experienced in early development and how changes in these profiles over time predicted a wide range in their school adjustment. Using latent class analysis (LCA), we found that children’s contextual risks could be characterized by one of the five risk typologies at each assessment from 6-months to first grade: low risk, high socio-cultural risk, high psychological risk, high socio-economic risk, and high risk across domains. Moreover, these risk profiles they experienced were fairly stable over time: children rarely moved in or out of certain risk classes from infancy through middle childhood. As a function of these risk typologies they experienced across time, children demonstrated different levels of academic and socio-emotional adjustment in first grade. These findings link configurations of risks children experience across infancy and early childhood to their first-grade adjustment observed by multiple informants.

Although child maltreatment is associated with short- and long-term maladaptive outcomes, some children are still able to display resilience. Currently, there is a limited understanding of how children’s resilience changes over time after experiencing maltreatment, especially for young children. Therefore, the current study used a longitudinal, multidimensional approach to examine trajectories of resilience among very young children involved in child protective services and determine whether placement setting and caregiving behaviors are associated with resilience trajectories. This study used data from National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being I and conducted repeated measures latent class analysis, focusing on children under 2 years old at baseline ( n = 1,699). Results suggested that there were three trajectories of resilience: increasing resilience, decreasing resilience, and stable, low resilience. Caregiver cognitive stimulation was related to increasing trajectories of resilience compared to both decreasing and stable, low resilience. These findings illustrate the importance of caregiving behaviors for promoting resilience among a particularly vulnerable population.

Many children come into contact with child protective services (CPS) each year, with the majority of these cases due to neglect. Poverty is consistently one of the strongest predictors of neglect, but the majority of families in poverty do not neglect their children. Therefore, a family’s poverty status is not a sufficient predictor of whether neglect will occur. While there exists some evidence about the intersecting environments of poverty and neglect, there remain several important unanswered questions within the child welfare literature. First, it is important to know which families in poverty are most vulnerable to engaging in neglect given the heterogeneity of families living below or near the poverty line. Second, we need to understand how different resources can decrease neglect among the general population and which resources are particularly beneficial for different depths of poverty. Third, it is essential to explore how exposure to different environments, namely early care and education, might compensate for contact with CPS and for different types of neglect. Each study of this dissertation addresses one of these gaps in the literature using data from The Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study and from the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being II. Study 1 illustrates the fact that risk factors co-occur to create four different risk profiles across early childhood, and that these risk profiles differentially relate to later neglect and involvement in CPS. Study 2 demonstrates that social support and maternal employment are related to less neglect, but that the associations between different protective factors and neglect vary across different levels of poverty. Study 3 provides evidence that ECE is beneficial for children involved in CPS but who remain in their homes, and that ECE is particularly helpful for children who experience different types of neglect. Overall, the three studies of this dissertation together provide a nuanced understanding of the intersection between poverty and neglect and offer new evidence about which families are most vulnerable to engaging in neglect, about what ways are promising for preventing neglect, and about which potential resources promote child well-being among children involved in CPS