Trajectories of Adolescent Mothers' Parenting Stress in Early Childhood: Exploring Relations with Children's Socio-Emotional Functioning and Early Childhood Programming
Menon, Meera.
2019
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Although all parents experience parenting stress, adolescent
mothers display high average levels of parenting stress. Elevated parenting stress
during early childhood is associated with suboptimal child socio-emotional
functioning in early and middle childhood. In this dissertation, I explored
patterns of adolescent mothers' parenting stress trajectories in early childhood,
as well as relations ... read morewith children's socio-emotional functioning and mothers'
involvement in early childhood programming. I conducted separate analyses of data
from two samples of participants involved in early childhood program evaluations.
Study One included 1,143 adult mothers and 948 adolescent mothers. Study Two
included 544 adolescent mothers. Using Growth Mixture Modeling, I identified the
following parenting stress trajectories: increasing, decreasing, stably low, and
stably high. Levels of parenting stress were slightly greater among adolescent
mothers than among adult mothers. Patterns of consistent and high parenting stress
were associated with poorer child socio-emotional functioning, whereas there were
no differences in socio-emotional functioning between children whose mothers
demonstrated initially high and decreasing or overall low parenting stress.
Finally, involvement in an early childhood program with the explicit goal of
parenting stress reduction was associated with stably low parenting stress. These
findings depict heterogeneity in the experience of adolescent mothers' parenting
that runs counter to the predominant deficit view of this population. I conclude
the dissertation with implications for programs aiming to support the functioning
of both adolescent mothers and their children.
Thesis (Ph.D.)--Tufts University, 2019.
Submitted to the Dept. of Child Development.
Advisor: M. Ann Easterbrooks.
Committee: Tama Leventhal, Sara Johnson, and Louisa Tarullo.
Keywords: Developmental psychology, and Psychology.read less - ID:
- sj139d526
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