Laura D. Pittman

African American Adolescent Girls in Impoverished Communities: Parenting Style and Adolescent Outcomes

The relationship between parenting style and adolescent functioning was examined in a sample of 302 African American adolescent girls and their mothers who lived in impoverished neighborhoods. Although previous research has found that authoritative parenting, as compared with authoritarian, permissive, and disengaged parenting, is associated with positive adolescent outcomes in both European American, middle-class and large multiethnic school-based samples, these parenting categories have not been fully explored in African American families living at or near poverty level. Data were collected from adolescent girls and their self-identified mothers or mother figures using in-home interviews and self-administered questionnaires. Parenting style was found to be significantly related to adolescent outcome in multiple domains including externalizing and internalizing behaviors, academic achievement, work orientation, sexual experience, and pregnancy history. Specifically, teens whose mothers were disengaged (low on both parental warmth and supervision/monitoring) were found to have the most negative outcomes.

Welfare History, Sanctions, and Developmental Outcomes among Low‐Income Children and Youth

Using a representative sample of low‐income, urban preschoolers (n = 755) and adolescents (n = 1,130), this article addresses links among family welfare receipt, family processes, and child outcomes. For adolescents, family welfare receipt is related to decreased cognitive achievement and heightened behavioral and emotional problems. For preschoolers, both current and past welfare receipt are associated with problematic functioning. Families who received welfare sanctions have children with particularly problematic developmental outcomes. Mothers’ human capital, health, and parenting practices attenuate many of these links. Policy implications regarding potential impacts of welfare reform on children’s developmental trajectories are discussed.

Roleplayed Safer Sex Skills of Heterosexual College Students Influenced by Both Personal and Partner Factors

Despite possessing knowledge regarding HIV transmission, many heterosexual college students engage in unprotected sex, partly because they lack necessary skills. The current study examined the assessment of safer sex skills, using roleplays. One hundred and fourteen undergraduates completed self-ratings of skills and participated in two written roleplays. Forty-one of them also participated in two videotaped roleplays. Results showed that students with different safer sex negotiation styles—assertive, aggressive, or compliant—used different persuasive arguments. Also, students used different arguments to persuade hypothetical relationship partners to engage in safer sex than they used with hypothetical one-night-stand partners. Finally, there was agreement across skills assessment methods—self-ratings, written roleplay ratings, and video roleplay ratings.

School Belonging, Ethnic Identity, and Psychological Adjustment among Ethnic Minority College Students.

This study considers how the psychological adjustment of ethnic minority college students may be linked to a sense of school belonging and ethnic identity, two constructs related to individuals feeling like they belong to a larger group. Using self-reports from 311 undergraduates from ethnic minority backgrounds, school belonging was found to be negatively associated with depressive symptoms, and positively associated with perceived self-worth, scholastic competence, and social acceptance, while ethnic identity was only found to be positively associated with self-worth. Furthermore, the interaction between ethnic identity and school belonging was significantly associated with self-worth, suggesting that in the absence of a sense of belonging at school, stronger ethnic identity was linked to higher self-worth. College students reported the lowest levels of self-worth when they were neither connected to their college nor connected to their ethnic group.

Attachment as a mediator between community violence and posttraumatic stress symptoms among adolescents with a history of maltreatment

Experiences that are detrimental to the attachment relationship, such as childhood maltreatment, may reduce feelings of safety among survivors and exacerbate the effects of exposure to subsequent violence, such as witnessing community violence. Though attachment style has been examined in regard to posttraumatic stress in adults who have a history of exposure to violence in childhood, less is known about the influence of attachment on the relationship between exposure to violence and posttraumatic stress symptoms in children and adolescents. The current study aimed to explore the role of attachment in the link between exposure to community violence and posttraumatic stress symptoms in adolescents with a history of childhood abuse. Participants included adolescents (aged 15-18 years) who had a history of maltreatment (N=75) and a matched sample without a childhood abuse history (N=78) from the National Data Archive on Child Abuse and Neglect (Salzinger, Feldman, & Ng-Mak, 2008). A conditional process model using bootstrapping to estimate indirect effects showed a significant indirect effect of insecure attachment on the relationship between exposure to community violence and posttraumatic stress symptoms for adolescents with a history of childhood physical abuse, but not for adolescents without this history. Implications for a cumulative risk model for post-trauma pathology starting in adolescence are discussed.

When do self-discrepancies predict negative emotions? Exploring formal operational thought and abstract reasoning skills as moderators

Individual differences in higher-order cognitive abilities may be an important piece to understanding how and when self-discrepancies lead to negative emotions. In the current study, three measures of reasoning abilities were considered as potential moderators of the relationship between self-discrepancies and depression and anxiety symptoms. Participants (N = 162) completed measures assessing self-discrepancies, depression and anxiety symptoms, and were administered measures examining formal operational thought, and verbal and non-verbal abstract reasoning skills. Both formal operational thought and verbal abstract reasoning were significant moderators of the relationship between actual:ideal discrepancies and depressive symptoms. Discrepancies predicted depressive symptoms for individuals with higher levels of formal operational thought and verbal abstract reasoning skills, but not for those with lower levels. The discussion focuses on the need to consider advanced reasoning skills when examining self-discrepancies.

Understanding the relationship between actual:ideal discrepancies and depressive symptoms: A developmental examination

Self-discrepancy theory (SDT) is one framework for understanding how goal failure is associated with depressive symptoms. The present studies sought to examine the variance in depressive symptoms explained by actual:ideal discrepancies, beyond what is accounted for by actual-self ratings. Additionally, gender and grade were examined as potential moderators in the relationship. In Study 1 (N = 228), discrepancies accounted for additional variance in the level of depressive symptoms beyond what was explained by actual-self ratings in a college sample. In Study 2 (N = 192), while similar global patterns were found, gender and grade differences emerged. For boys, the relationship between actual:ideal discrepancies and depressive symptoms was due to actual-self ratings. For girls, a developmental pattern suggested that actual:ideal discrepancies become more important to the prediction of depressive symptoms among older girls. Implications for the emergence of the discrepancy-depression association are discussed.

Maternal and Paternal Predictors of Child Depressive Symptoms: An Actor-Partner Interdependence Framework

Family members are theorized to influence each other via transactional or systems related processes; however, the literature is limited given its focus on mother–child relationships and the utilization of statistical approaches that do not model interdependence within family members. The current study evaluated associations between self-reported parental affect, parenting behavior, and child depressive symptoms among 103 mother–father–child triads. Children ranged in age from 8 to 12 years. Higher maternal negative affect was associated with greater maternal and paternal harsh/negative parenting behavior. While maternal negative affect was directly associated with child depressive symptoms, paternal negative affect was indirectly associated with child depressive symptoms via paternal harsh/negative behavior. In a separate model, maternal positive affect was indirectly associated with child depressive symptoms via maternal supportive/positive behavior. These results highlight the importance of simultaneously modeling maternal and paternal characteristics as predictors of child depressive symptoms.

I Wish My Parents Would Stop Arguing! The Impact of Interparental Conflict on Young Adults

Research shows that interparental conflict is positively associated with internalizing behaviors in children and adolescents, but few have considered these associations among young adults. This study uses the cognitive-contextual framework to explore whether appraisals of threat and self-blame explain the expected associations between interparental conflict and internalizing symptoms in a sample of young adults. Perceptions of interparental conflict, appraisals of threat and self-blame, and two aspects of internalizing symptoms (i.e., depression, anxiety) were measured in 255 undergraduates (ages 18-21) at two Midwestern universities. Parallel mediation models demonstrated an indirect pathway through threat to depressive symptoms. In contrast, the indirect pathway through self-blame was supported when predicting anxiety. The importance of considering interparental conflict and its psychological consequences during young adulthood is discussed.