Douglas M. Teti

Maternal Depression and the Quality of Early Attachment: An Examination of Infants, Preschoolers, and Their Mothers.

Relations between maternal depression and attachment security among 50 infant-mother and 54 preschool child-mother dyads were examined using the classification system of M. D. S. Ainsworth, M. C. Blehar, E. Waters, and S. Wall (1978) and M. Main and J. Solomon (1990) for infants and the Preschool Assessment of Attachment (P. M. Crittenden, 1992b) for preschoolers. Attachment insecurity was significantly associated with maternal depression among infants and preschoolers. Furthermore, children without unitary, coherent attachment strategies tended to have more chronically impaired mothers than did children with coherent, organized attachment strategies. Results stress the importance of severity-chronicity of parental illness in the study of depression and early attachment relations, and that differences between children with and without coherent, organized attachment strategies are as clinically informative as are differences between secure and insecure children.

Minimizing Adverse Effects of Low Birthweight: Four-Year Results of an Early Intervention Program

The outcome of an early intervention program for low-birthweight (LBW) infants was examined in this study. The intervention consisted of 11 sessions, beginning during the final week of hospitalization and extending into the home over a 3-month period. The program aimed to facilitate maternal adjustment to the care of a LBW infant, and, indirectly, to enhance the childs development. Neonates weighing less than 2,200 grams and under 37 weeks gestational age were randomly assigned to experimental or control conditions. A full-term, normal birthweight (NBW) group served as a second control. 6-month analyses of dyads who completed all assessments over a 4-year period (Ns = 25 LBW experimental, 29 LBW control, and 28 NBW infant-mother dyads) showed that the experimental group mothers reported significantly greater self-confidence and satisfaction with mothering, as well as more favorable perception of infant temperament than LBW control group mothers. A progressive divergence between the LBW experimental and LBW control children on cognitive scores culminated in significant group differences on the McCarthy GCI at ages 36 and 48 months, when the LBW experimental group caught up to the NBW group. Possible explanations for the observed delay in the emergence of intervention effects on cognitive development and the mediating role of favorable mother-infant transactional patterns are discussed in light of recent evidence from the literature.

Mother-toddler interaction patterns associated with maternal depression

Interactive coordination was observed in laboratory play interactions of pairs of 29 clinically depressed and 14 nondepressed mothers and their 13-29-month-old children (M = 18.9 months). Nondepressed mothers and their children displayed more interactive coordination than depressed-mother dyads (p < .001). Depressed mothers were less likely to repair interrupted interactions, and their toddlers were less likely to maintain interactions than nondepressed controls. Toddlers matched their nondepressed but not their depressed mothers negative behavior rates. Results suggested that early interventions focus on training mothers to attend to maintain, and repair mother-child interactions to more closely approximate normal levels of interactive coordination.

Cultural specificity of support sources, correlates and contexts: Three studies of African‐American and Caucasian youth

Levels and correlates of parental support, peer support, partner support, and/or spiritual support among African American and Caucasian youth were examined in three contexts: adolescent pregnancy (Study 1), first year of college (Study 2), and adolescence and young adulthood (ages 15–29; Study 3). Partially consistent with a cultural specificity perspective, in different contexts different support sources were higher in level and/or more strongly related to adjustment for one ethnic group than the other. Among pregnant adolescents, levels of spiritual support were higher for African Americans than Caucasians; additionally, peer support was positively related to well-being only for African Americans whereas partner support was positively related to well-being only for Caucasians. Among college freshmen, family support was more strongly related to institutional and goal commitment for African Americans than Caucasians; conversely, peer support was more strongly related to institutional and goal commitment among Caucasians. Among 15 to 29-year-olds, levels of parental support and spiritual support were higher among African Americans than Caucasians; additionally, spiritual support was positively related to self-esteem for African Americans but not for Caucasians. Implications and limitations of the research are discussed.

An Intervention Program for Mothers of Low-Birthweight Infants: Preliminary Results

Mothers of low-birthweight babies born at the Medical Center Hospital of Vermont during a 21-month period were randomly assigned to experimental ( N = 34) and control ( N = 40) groups. Forty-one normal-birthweight controls were also recruited. Experimental mothers received an 11-session intervention program which emphasized maternal sensitivity and responsiveness to infant social signals. This paper analyzes the impact of the program, by 6 months, on maternal adaptation and psychopathology, and on infant cognitive development and temperament.

Socioeconomic and Marital Outcomes of Adolescent Marriage, Adolescent Childbirth, and Their Co-Occurrence.

Data on longterm educational occupational and marital outcomes in a sample of over 20000 30-55-year old white and black women drawn from the 1980 US Current Population Survey suggest that the co-occurence of adolescent marriage and adolescent childbirth is associated with different degrees of risk than the occurrence of either event alone. The best socioeconomic outcomes were experienced by women who never married or gave birth women who married in adulthood but never gave birth and women who married and gave birth in adulthood. By contrast the lowest levels of educational attainment and occupational status were experienced by women who had an adolescent childbirth regardless of whether or when marriage occurred. Adolescent marriage without coincident or subsequent childbirth and adolescent marriage followed by 1st childbirth in adulthood were associated with better socioeconomic outcomes than the combination of adolescent marriage and adolescent childbirth however. On average women who gave birth in adolescence completed less than 11 years of education compared with 11.82 years for the adolescent marriage/adult childbirth group and 12.09 years for the adolescent marriage/no children group. Marital instability was the associated with both adolescent marriage and adolescent childbirth although the former was the stronger predictor. Women who married and gave birth in adolescence were interestingly more likely to have an intact 1st marriage than women who married in adolescence but never had children. Overall these findings confirm the belief that adolescent childbearing places women at a longterm substantial disadvantage socioeconomically regardless of whether marriage takes place.

School Importance and Dropout Among Pregnant Adolescents

PURPOSE This study examined the relationship of psychological well-being, social support, and demographic variables to school importance and school dropout among pregnant teens. METHOD Fifty-one Caucasians and 68 African-Americans (mean age = 16.7 years, mean weeks pregnant = 23) were recruited from two Baltimore area prenatal teen clinics. The adolescents completed questionnaires measuring depression, self-esteem, mastery, parental and friend support, demographic characteristics (i.e., age, marital status, ethnicity, socioeconomic status), school importance, and status. RESULTS Most adolescents were enrolled in school or had graduated (69.7%), were receiving at least passing grades (78.7%), and perceived finishing high school as very important (76.7%). Blacks were more likely to say school was important (p < 0.001), were less likely to drop out (p < 0.01), and received higher grades (p < 0.01) than whites. Dropouts had lower family incomes than current school attenders and graduates (p < 0.05). One measure of psychological well-being (mastery, p < 0.01) was positively correlated with school importance. Social support did not correlate with school importance or dropout. CONCLUSIONS These findings suggest that dropping out of school among pregnant teens may be more strongly related to sociocultural factors than to individual characteristics such as emotional support and psychological well-being. Overall, this study reveals a positive picture of educational continuation and performance during pregnancy, with most adolescents recognizing the importance of education and remaining in school.

Early adversity, RSA, and inhibitory control: Evidence of children's neurobiological sensitivity to social context

This study examined parasympathetic physiology as a moderator of the effects of early adversity (i.e., child abuse and neglect) on childrens inhibitory control. Childrens respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) was assessed during a resting baseline, two joint challenge tasks with mother, and an individual frustration task. RSA assessed during each of the joint parent-child challenge tasks moderated the effects of child maltreatment (CM) status on childrens independently-assessed inhibitory control. No moderation effect was found for RSA assessed at baseline or in the child-alone challenge task. Among CM-exposed children, lower RSA levels during the joint task predicted the lowest inhibitory control, whereas higher joint task RSA was linked to higher inhibitory control scores that were indistinguishable from those of non-CM children. Results are discussed with regard to the importance of considering context specificity (i.e., individual and caregiver contexts) in how biomarkers inform our understanding of individual differences in vulnerability among at-risk children.

Parenting at Risk: New Perspectives, New Approaches

In this lead paper for this special section, we advance the perspective that new insights into parenting at risk can be gained by focusing on the dynamic emotional processes that occur during parent-child exchanges, with special emphasis on parental emotions as experienced and their regulation of emotion and underlying cognitions, as well as the role of developmentally rooted cognitions in shaping these associations. We discuss the very few but germinal studies that embody this perspective and introduce work in this section that examines emotion dynamics during parenting in real time. We believe this perspective will move us beyond static conceptualizations of parenting at risk, broadens our understanding of parenting as a process, and accelerates our ability to identify the essential targets of intervention when parenting is at risk.

An Ecological Study of Child-Mother Attachments Among Japanese Sojourners in the United States

This study examined the effects of life stress and support on parenting and attachment security among 53 Japanese mothers and their preschoolers who were temporarily living in the U.S. Mothers who had been in the U.S. for 6 months or less reported more life stress and less social support than did mothers who had been in the U.S. for more than 6 months. Measures of life stress and support were differently related to measures of parenting stress and security of attachment. When life stress was high, mothers reported more parenting stress if support was not adequate and less parenting stress if support was adequate. High support, particularly high marital support, was associated with lower levels of attachment security. The findings call for further research on family dynamics—particularly on the interplay between the husband-wife and mother-child subsystems —to develop ecological models of Japanese parenting and child development.