Developing the resilience of children and adolescents with parents in prison is important, but it should not involve just encouraging them to adapt to situations of disadvantage and injustice. Instead, the children and youth should be invited to challenge these situations. Finding ways to raise families out of poverty would go far in addressing the needs of families who have a parent in prison.

Impacts on children and adolescents of having a parent in prison

Having an incarcerated parent has multiple impacts on youth, with profound implications for both child and adolescent development. Antisocial behavior, psychological difficulties, trauma, risk taking, and health problems in children are all linked to having a parent in prison. Experts are also concerned about intergenerational transmission of criminality.

Children and adolescents with an incarcerated parent are likely to already be facing disadvantage and material hardship, and the imprisonment intensifies these problems. Imprisonment of a parent, particularly a father who earns money or pays child support, can cause intense stress for a family.

“In a 2010 comprehensive review of evidence, 58% of studies found that visits to parents in prison benefitted children, particularly if visiting arrangements were family friendly.”

Furthermore, imprisonment involves extra costs, such as legal fees, fines, prison visits, and phone calls. The pressure on the non-incarcerated parent, who is often already underresourced, can lead to a decline in the parent’s mental and physical health, which is linked to less positive parenting. And this, in turn, is linked to less cognitive and social competence in children and youth.

Incarceration exacerbates family instability, including relationship stress and the likelihood of divorce and separation. A child or adolescent may even become homeless: About 11% of children with a mother in prison and 2% of children with a father in prison enter into foster or state care. (However, the causal link between incarceration and foster care is uncertain.)

In some cases, incarceration can lead to improvements for children and adolescents, removing from the home a source of disruption, abuse, or violence.

Protective factors for children and youth

Researchers have identified a number of protective factors for children and youth with an incarcerated parent. A positive relationship between parent and child prior to the incarceration of that parent can help youth cope.

The quality of caregiving at home is very significant, though it is compromised by incarceration, as described above. Kin-based care, such as that provided by grandparents, can protect children and give them the opportunity to thrive.

The nature of a child’s contact with the parent in prison or jail can also make a difference. Contact can be through in-person visits or videos, recorded messages, letters, and phone calls.

In a 2010 comprehensive review of evidence, 58% of studies reported that visits to parents in prison benefitted children, particularly if visiting arrangements were family friendly. Four- to nine- year-olds were likely to show improved self-esteem following visits to their fathers in federal prison, as do the same aged children following visits to their mother in prison. In one study, adolescents with regular contact with their mothers in prison were less likely to drop out of school early than those with irregular or no contact. Children nine years old and older were less likely to display anger and alienation if they saw their mother in jail than if they had no contact.

All forms of contact seem to be beneficial. One study found less depression in four- to 14-year-olds who received more letters from their jailed parents than in their peers who did not receive letters. Letter writing was also associated with a stronger coparenting relationship between the two parents.

“Developing the resilience of children and adolescents with a parent in prison is important, but it should not involve just encouraging them to adapt to situations of disadvantage and injustice.”

Visits to prison can work both ways for children. They can help strengthen family bonds and the commitment to positive parenting by the incarcerated parent. They can provide an opportunity for sharing meals and playing games, and family members often report positively about the experience. But a visit to a prison can be very disturbing for a child.

In the United States, jails are locally operated, have shorter-term facilities, and typically have poor visiting facilities. In contrast, federal prisons hold people with longer sentences and offer more optimal conditions for visits.

Support for children and youth with an incarcerated parent

Parenting Inside Out is an intervention that has been evaluated via a randomized controlled study. It has shown positive outcomes for children’s and youth’s relationships with both the parent in prison and the parent at home. The program has many parts, including therapeutically organized visiting at the prison and collaboration with community agencies to provide support to the parent and family after the sentence is over.

Family-friendly visiting facilities are important and include having books, toys, and nursery facilities for very young children. Children and youth can also benefit from mentoring in their community to help them cope at home and at school.

Programs that focus on building children’s resilience look at the strengths already in the family and support family members to support each other and engage effectively with service providers. Sesame Street has created a multi-media kit, Little Children Big Challenges: Incarceration, that aims to help children thrive when a parent is incarcerated. Schools can also help children build resilience in the face of the adversity of having a parent in prison.

The Sesame Street program addresses social justice. It engages with parents to leverage power to tackle systemic problems such as poverty and disenfranchisement.

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Humans develop empathy in response to the basic need to care and we know that children who grow up with non-TD siblings often take on greater caregiving roles. We also know from other research that siblings influence each other’s development of empathy.

In the Israeli study, researchers measured cognitive empathy by asking children to score statements such as “I can often understand how people feel even before they tell me.”

“The researchers suggest that a child with a non-TD twin needs to develop better skills of understanding because of the difficulties their siblings experience – for example, with communication.”

The children could have said what they thought the researchers wanted to hear, but this is unlikely because they did not score higher than their peers on other measures of empathy, namely “emotional empathy” and “prosociality.” Emotional empathy – feeling others’ emotions rather than just understanding them – was measured by asking children to rate statements like “When I see someone being taken advantage of, I feel protective toward them.” Prosociality was measured by inviting children to play a computer game that led to a choice about allocating points needed to earn a prize: “Which do you prefer? (1) To earn 20 points for yourself and not donate any points to children in need. (2) To earn 10 points for yourself and donate 10 points to children in need.”

Photo: yan Krukov. Pexels.

Why might a difference exist in cognitive empathy but not in emotional empathy? The researchers suggest that a child with a non-TD twin needs to develop better skills of understanding because of the difficulties their siblings experience – for example, with communication. Meanwhile, greater emotional empathy “might be disadvantageous for the empathizer’s adaptive functioning in a relationship with an individual in distress”.

The study focused on cognitive and emotional empathy toward others in general, not empathy toward children’s non-TD twin in particular.

The study involved 63 twin pairs drawn from a larger study of 778 families with 11-year-old twins. The non-TD twin siblings had a variety of conditions, including language-communication problems (12), cerebral palsy (5), autism spectrum disorder (2), hearing impairment (1), and visual impairment (1).

Whilst most earlier research on children with a non-TD sibling has focused on the negative impacts of having a non-TD sibling, some other studies have also found enhanced empathy, including studies of children with Down Syndrome and of siblings of children with autism. However, results of such research are not entirely consistent due to different methods of measuring and differences in the ages of the children (during childhood or later in adulthood).

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Sex differences are extremely subtle and variable. Instead, what emerges from a large body of research is a mosaic of countless brain attributes that differ in unique patterns across all individuals. There are far more similarities between female and male brains than differences. Brains are more like the heart and kidney than like reproductive organs.

“At birth, the total difference in brain volume between boys and girls is 6%, and this increases to 11% in adulthood. However, the difference in average body mass starts at 4% and increases to 18% over the same period. Therefore, it appears that larger bodies require larger brains.”

When pondering male-female differences, it is customary to refer to sex as the inflexible biological component and gender as the psychosocial manifestation. But with brains, the two are mixed because brains are plastic and alter around experience. So for brain science, the term sex/gender is used and assigned based on how a person identifies themselves.

However, there are small differences between girls and boys and between women and men. A comprehensive review of neuroscience research led by Lise Eliot, author of the book Pink Brain, Blue Brain: How Small Differences Grow Into Troublesome Gaps – And What We Can Do About It, explains the differences found from birth onwards.

A key risk in reviewing the literature is bias driven by medical and popular interest. The public has a strong desire to find differences, so studies that find differences are more likely to be published than studies that do not. Similarly, studies that find differences are more likely to be found in literature searches that use terms like “gender differences” and “sex differences.”

Overall brain size

Overall brain size is unambiguously larger in males. Nevertheless, once the size of the individual is considered, sex/gender alone accounts for little difference. At birth, the total difference in brain volume between boys and girls is 6%, and this increases to 11% in adulthood. However, the difference in average body mass starts at 4% and increases to 18% over the same period. Therefore, it appears that larger bodies require larger brains.

Consider differences by sex/gender of other organs: While the average size of women’s and men’s brains differs by 11%, the size of human hearts differs by 17%, lung size differs by 23%, liver size differs by 14%, the size of the pancreas differs by 18%, the size of the kidney differs by 19%, and thyroid size differs by 25%, with all of these organs larger in men.

Boys and men have a higher proportion of white matter than grey matter in their brains, but this proportion correlates with brain size. Men and women matched for brain size exhibit no difference in the grey matter-to-white matter ratio.

Photo: Ketut Subiyanto. Pexels.

Size of particular parts of the brain

The biggest sex/gender size difference in the human brain is in a tiny component of the anterior hypothalamus, the INAH-3, which is only 0.6 mm in diameter and 60% larger in human males. But even this is a very small difference compared to other animals. In rats, the similar structure is five times bigger in males, so big that it has been named the “sexually-dimorphic nucleus.”

Sex/gender differences in the size of the hippocampus and the amygdala have been a topic of popular interest, given that they are linked to sex/gender differences in learning and emotion. But the differences are tiny – no more than 1% in either case.

The volume of the caudate volume appears to differ between boys and girls in early adolescence, but not before or after that time. This difference could just be a fleeting effect of girls’ earlier entry into puberty.

Studies of sex/gender differences in the average size of the pallidum, thalamus, cerebellum, and nucleus accumbens have found nothing significant. Studies of the thickness of the cortex and of individual regions within the cortex have yielded similar results. Only in the larger putamen has an average size difference been found, but this is less than 3%.

Brain connectivity

There is minimal support for the popular idea that the left and right hemispheres of the brain are more connected in women than in men. This notion has been subject to extensive analysis over decades. These connections have been measured in clinical research, such as studies of aphasia following damage to the left hemisphere. The research has been carried out while men and women were engaged in various auditory, visual, tactile, and dual-task activities, as well as in situations where the subjects were resting. In all cases, sex/gender differences were trivial or non-existent.

“The brain circuitry for emotion processing, like that for language and spatial recognition, shows overwhelming similarities between women and men, and even more similarities between girls and boys.”

A difference in the size of the corpus callosum has been invoked to argue that women have stronger left-right brain connections than men. Researchers have looked for differences in fetuses and children but have not found any.

Predicting sex/gender by measuring brain activity

Researchers have applied artificial intelligence to observing brain structure and activity through magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and efforts to predict if the subject is a woman or a man. The accuracy of such predictions is high, at 80%-90%, but most of the differences identified have been based on brain size. Even efforts to measure brain activity while women and men were doing tasks in which behavioral sex/gender differences are most frequently recognized, such as language or spatial skills, have found little difference. In one study, no differences in brain activity were found in 8-year-olds during spatial tasks.

The behavioral differences between women and men must have a neural basis, but researchers have not found evidence that these differences originate at birth. This supports the idea that these differences are learned through practice and socialization in childhood and beyond. When the brains of men and women military pilots with similar training in spatial skills were compared via MRI scans, no sex/gender differences were found.

There has been a huge interest in finding sex/gender brain differences associated with emotional processing. Objective measures of empathy, such as the ability to identify emotion in photos and video clips of faces, suggest that a female advantage is learned through childhood and adolescence since the differences are small in early childhood. However, there is little consensus in brain research results across hundreds of studies. The brain circuitry for emotion processing, like that for language and spatial recognition, shows overwhelming similarities between women and men, and even more similarities between girls and boys.

The authors of the review conclude: “Scholarly interest in brain sex differences is as old as Aristotle…. these findings can be interpreted as rebutting the popular discourse about the “male brain” and the “female brain” as distinct organs.

Challenges to these conclusions

The conclusions reached by Eliot and her colleagues are not universally accepted and were criticized in a commentary published after their paper appeared (Hirnstein & Hausmann, 2021). Similarly, another recent research report noted that the sex differences were indeed small, as Eliot and colleagues showed, but suggested they might in fact be important (Williams et al., 2021).

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This means that gestures or “hand work” have an important role in teaching and learning. A recent study asked: Is non-verbal communication used in similar ways in culturally different communities?

The study examined the way children and their parents in two cultures – a Native American culture and a non-Native American culture – combine speech and gesture.

The Menominee children spoke more than their non-Native American counterparts.

Researchers watched how 4-year-olds used gesture and speech when playing with their mother or father. The pairs (17 child-mother pairs and 4 child-father pairs) were from the Menominee community in Wisconsin (one of 574 federally recognized Native Nations in the United States). The 4,000-5,000 Menominee people live on much-reduced ancestral lands in northeastern Wisconsin. The other 18 child-parent pairs (3 fathers, 15 mothers) in the study were from a non-Native American community in Chicago.

In the study, the pairs played with a forest diorama, consisting of both fixed landscape items and moveable trees and animals. This toy was developed by a collaboration between researchers and Menominee community members. The Menominee reservation is highly forested; hunting and fishing are important activities in the community.

The researchers observed videos of the pairs’ play and coded speech, gestures, and actions. (Actions could be placing an animal into the diorama, while gestures were hand signals and did not involve picking up anything.) Three categories of play were identified: verbal utterances on their own, gestures/actions on their own, and verbal utterances combined with a gesture or action. The researchers also measured how much the child and parent spoke – the number of utterances per minute.

The Menominee children spoke more than their non-Native American counterparts – 11.6 utterances per minute compared to 9.8. There is a widespread idea that Native American children are quieter, but this is clearly not the case when they are feeling secure with a parent and playing with something with which they identify.

For children in both communities, about 70% of all verbal utterances were accompanied by a gesture or an action. Gestures were more likely than actions to be accompanied by speech, to the same extent in both communities. Parents combined speech and gesture/action less than their children: About 45% of utterances of the Menominee parents and 40% of non-Native American parents were accompanied by actions or gestures.

The study provides a more culturally inclusive foundation for building on the cultural and community strengths of children in their education. It also highlights the important role of hand work in teaching and learning.

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The nature of climate anxiety

Climate change worries people, youth included, in different ways. It threatens people and places we love. It threatens people far away and future generations, as well as nature and animals. For some it is already destroying their livelihoods, cultures, and well-being. Actually experiencing extreme weather events increases individuals’ commitment to taking action, as in the response of Indigenous people to drought (Australia), Inuit people to the loss of sea ice, Indian farmers to temperatures that destroy their crops, and Inupiat communities to flooding (NW Alaska).

How do children respond? Before adolescence, they may not have the capacity to comprehend the complexity and enormity of the problems. Ojala’s research finds that younger children are less prone to pessimism than older youth, who have greater capacity to comprehend the gravity of the situation.

The link between climate change worry and psychological well-being is not straightforward. Climate change anxiety can be associated with environment-friendly behaviors, as found in studies in Finland, Germany, Sweden, and the United States. It does not reliably predict poor mental well-being. Children with higher self-efficacy, or who have less to worry about on a day-to-day basis, may be more likely to have enough energy to worry about climate change and have adequate resources to engage positively.

Parents and teachers have a vital role in shaping how children react to climate change anxiety.

How children deal with climate anxiety

In her research, which is based on questionnaire responses by children, youth, and young adults, Ojala has articulated three coping strategies.

Problem focused. Children and young people seek information about what to do and take individual action, such as cycling to school, eating less meat, and saving energy. The danger in this response is that the burden of individual responsibility can harm children’s well-being. Some children undertake actions together as a group, providing a sense of solidarity. Older children are more likely than younger children to make a problem-focused response, perhaps because they are more mature and have more individual agency.

Emotion focused. Children and young people seek to manage their emotions in response to the anxiety. A small proportion of children simply deny climate change. Others just avoid the information and distract themselves with other things. Yet others seek social support, discussing the issue with people around them. A few older youth ruminate darkly, vent anger, and fall into fatalism.

“Ojala presents three recommendations about what teachers and parents can do to support children to respond positively to climate change.”

Meaning focused. Children and young people seek out positive aspects of the situation, for example, the overall increase in global awareness and action or the probability of solutions being found eventually. They have trust – in the science, in technology, in what others are doing, in environmental organizations, and in politicians. A leading global youth campaign, Fridays for the Future, is founded on trust in science.

How teachers and parents can support children to engage with climate change

Ojala presents three recommendations about what teachers and parents can do to support children to respond positively to climate change. She argues that more evaluation of particular approaches is needed, but in the meantime, she builds on youth’s responses to her questionnaires.

1. Support a problem-focused response. Teachers should show concrete examples of pro-environmental behavior. Offering specific examples, rather than getting children to search for and plan actions, helps avoid the risk of children feeling the burden of individual responsibility. Teachers can encourage children to come together to build a sense of togetherness around action.
2. Support an emotion-focused response. Teachers and parents should take seriously children’s fears and emotions about climate change, acknowledging, validating, and encouraging discussion about them. Ojala recommends promoting “critical emotional awareness.” For example, children could be invited to consider what emotions are “allowed,” whose emotions are taken seriously, how boys and girls might react differently, why different children react differently, or the difference between individual and collective responses.
3. Support a meaning-focused response. Teachers can promote hope and trust by inviting climate actors from different generations into schools to share their contributions to tackling climate change. Teachers and parents can turn the discussion to one about values, such as caring for people who are suffering and for animals. These adults can introduce children and youth to opportunities to act collectively with other young people, for example, by taking part in youth climate campaigns.

As teachers and parents themselves become more aware of the climate crisis – driven largely by the campaigns of young people – the challenge of raising children in the shadow of such a threat becomes more and more acute. Ojala provides a useful set of actions that parents and teachers can take, based on what children and young people themselves say about what works.

The Climate Psychology Alliance lists resources and networks for young people, resources for parents, teachers and carers, and courses on climate psychology. 

The post Three Ways to Help Children Channel Climate Change Anxiety Into Positive Action appeared first on Child and Family Blog.

They found that for most youth, rates of serious depression and anxiety were lower than rates in similar surveys before the pandemic, but rates did not decline for Hispanic and gender non-binary youth.

They also looked at how 10 potential drivers of mental health functioned overall and in different subgroups (defined by ethnicity, gender, and age).

The biggest influence on young people’s depression and anxiety during COVID-19, by a factor of 1.5-2, was how young people rated parent support, which was measured by two items: parents’ helpfulness in sorting out their feelings and low levels of stress caused by parents.

Many other studies have shown that COVID-19 has substantially increased levels of psychological disturbance among parents which, in turn, negatively affects parenting behaviors. On this basis, the main policy recommendation from Luthar and colleagues’ research is to ensure ongoing support for parents and other caregivers in times of crisis such as COVID-19. “Monitoring ongoing parent mental health and parenting needs, and intervening where appropriate, should be of high importance for public health efforts to promote child well-being,” the researchers suggest.

How the research was designed

The study included children and young people in middle and high school, that is, from 11 to 18 years  old. It took place during the first three months of COVID-19 in 2020 in the United States. Just over one third of the children were of color and just under one third lived in families that received financial aid.

“The biggest influence on young people’s depression and anxiety during COVID-19, by a factor of 1.5-2, was how young people rated parent support.”

The students were from 49 relatively high performing schools with high Standard Assessment Test scores – 40 independent/private day schools, 8 boarding schools and one public school. Previous research has shown that  students in these schools are at risk due to the very high pressures to achieve and the intense competition they face. At the same time, resilience studies indicate that findings on powerful risk and protective factors tend to generalize across different subgroups, meaning that the results from this study may have relevance beyond students in high-achieving schools.

The study asked students about 10 factors known from earlier research to influence mental health: (1) perceptions of parent support, (2) concerns heard at school, (3) adults to confide in, (4) friends to confide in, (5) learning effectiveness (“how well are you able to learn new school materials these days?”), (6) time for fun, (7) worry about grades, (8) worry about life after graduating, (9) worry about parents’ jobs and finances, and (10) worry about family health.

The findings

The first question addressed was whether there had been any changes in rates of serious depression and anxiety from 2019 to the first months of COVID-19. Levels of serious or clinically significant depression and anxiety, which had ranged from 5-10% in pre-pandemic 2019 research, were typically half those during COVID-19 in 2020. The notable exception to this were two groups: Depression in Hispanic young people hardly decreased at all and depression in gender non-binary young people increased a little.

Considering mental health as well as its potential drivers, the researchers drew attention to the unique experiences of several subgroups.

• Black youth reported lower levels of anxiety on average than White youth. At the same time, they reported somewhat lower parent support, more worry about family jobs, more concern about not having adults to confide in, and not having their concerns heard at school. Asian youth had the most confidence in their ability to learn during the pandemic. At the same time, they were more worried than White youth about their academic grades, their futures, and their families’ health and jobs.
• Hispanic youth were at a disadvantage compared to White youth on several dimensions, and unlike other groups of color, there was no area in which they fared better than White youth. Also, when tracked across the first 12 weeks of mandatory distance learning, students of Hispanic heritage showed steep increases in symptoms of anxiety, problems with learning, and worries about grades. Hispanic students described blatant experiences of discrimination at school and a relative lack of systematic attention to this.
• Even when comparisons of ethnic groups were statistically significant, the overall size of associations was small. By contrast, effects by gender were medium to large on both depression and anxiety. Compared to both males and females, gender non-binary youth reported higher levels of depression and lower levels of concerns heard at school and confiding in friends. This may have been because they had less access to support from professionals and friends as a result of being confined at home.
• Girls showed higher levels of depression and anxiety than boys, as is generally the case. They also reported somewhat less support from parents, less ability to confide in adults, less feeling that their concerns were heard at school, and more worries about family jobs and family health.
• Older students (high-school age) reported slightly higher levels of anxiety and depression than younger students (middle-school age), as well as less parent support. On two aspects of academics – effectiveness of learning and worry about their futures – older students were considerably more troubled than younger students.

The second question addressed in the study was, of the 10 drivers of mental health assessed, which ones were strongly related to students’ mental health?

“Hispanic youth were at a disadvantage compared to White youth on several dimensions, and unlike other groups of color, there was no area in which they fared better than White youth.”

Each of the 10 risk and protective influences listed earlier was statistically related to levels of depression and anxiety, but one stood out as the most influential: perceived parental support. This pattern of findings generally held true in different student subgroups based on students’ ethnicity, gender, and age (middle versus high school). Following parent support, other dimensions important for mental health were effectiveness of learning online, concerns heard by school adults, and worries about grades and about the future.

In addition to recommending support for parents, the researchers stressed the importance of supporting teachers, who have been pivotal in boosting young people’s mental health during COVID-19. When asked what was going well at school during school closures, students in this study mentioned support from their teachers most frequently. In the months ahead, schools will need to help buffer against burnout and emotional exhaustion among their faculty and staff as a result of high, longstanding burdens of caregiving.

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• Consider fathers’ health behaviors as well as mothers’,
• Assess and treat fathers’ mental health as well as mothers’,
• Treat family stress and attend to the couple relationship, and
• Provide access for fathers to family leave.

Much research focuses on how mothers-to-be influence babies’ health and development before and during pregnancy – touching on mothers’ environments, emotions, and behaviors. Mothers-to-be are often advised to alter their lifestyles accordingly.

Less attention is paid to fathers, but there is sufficient evidence to make a case for practice and policy to change in this regard.

This research review sets out seven ways fathers influence children’s development during pregnancy, providing a useful tool for planners of prenatal services and policies.

1. Epigenetic and genetic changes: Prior health behaviors

• Obesity is associated with epigenetic changes that predict restricted growth in childhood.
• Alcohol affects the sperm epigenome and is a risk factor for alcohol use and alcohol sensitivity in offspring.
• Fathers’ diabetes and fast-food consumption predict earlier births.

2. Epigenetic and genetic changes: Exposure to environmental toxins

• Exposure to workplace welding fumes is linked with higher prevalence of congenital abnormalities (Egyptian study).
• Fathers exposed to pesticides (e.g., nematocide, dibromochloropropane, ethylene dibromide) are more likely to have suboptimal sperm quality.

3. Epigenetic and genetic changes: Early life stress

• Children of fathers who survived the Holocaust and fathers with post-traumatic stress disorder show epigenetic differences, namely increased DNA methylation in a promoter region of the glucocorticoid receptor. These are linked with increased prevalence of psychiatric illness and reduced cortisol levels in the children.
• Studies of mothers have shown links between their exposure to disasters (e.g., natural disasters, terrorist attacks, COVID-19) and outcomes for their children. No such research exists for fathers but it would likely reveal similar links.

4. Neurobiological and hormonal changes

• First-time fathers with a higher prenatal testosterone level report less effective and positive parenting six months after the birth.
• First-time fathers with a higher prenatal oxytocin level endorse a more nurturing parenting philosophy after the child’s birth.

“This research review sets out seven ways fathers influence children’s development during pregnancy, providing a useful tool for planners of antenatal services and policies.”

5. Influences on expectant mothers’ health behaviors

• Alcohol use by an expectant father is linked to higher alcohol use by pregnant mothers (Ukrainian study).
• Expectant mothers engage more in prenatal health actions such as stopping smoking when their male partners do more caregiving (e.g., listening to baby’s heartbeat, purchasing items for baby, attending prenatal classes).

6. Influences on expectant mothers’ mental health

• A higher quality of couple relationship is associated with expectant mothers’ lower distress, which in turn is associated with more positive temperament of the baby (U.S. study).
• More relationship conflict correlates with greater incidences of medically complex births. Much research links prenatal stress in mothers to premature birth and low birth weight.
• Depression in expectant fathers correlates with depression in expectant mothers. Joint mental health symptoms in two parents prenatally predict the same symptoms in the parents 12 months after the birth, which in turn correlate with children’s executive function problems at 7-8 years (Finnish study).

7. Influences on mothers’ hormones

• A couple’s hormonal levels tend to synchronize and follow similar patterns. Lower testosterone levels in both expectant parents predict greater investment by the father in the parenting relationship after the birth.
• When cortisol levels are lower in both expectant parents, there is likely to be less conflict between them before birth and less depression on the part of the father after the birth.
• Hormonal changes in mothers can affect fetal development and children’s long-term social and emotional development.

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The researchers conclude: “The present study challenges the assumption that women are more suited to primary caregiving than men … fathers and mothers are equally competent at parenting in the primary caregiving role.”

Based on this finding, they recommend: “The high quality of parenting demonstrated by the primary caregiver fathers suggests that more fathers should be encouraged to be highly involved parents. To do so, policies facilitating this, such as shared parental leave and flexible work, including more part-time employment options, need to be widely promoted both by governments and by individual organizations.”

Previous research on primary caregiver fathers has often focused on gay fathers who became parents through adoption and surrogacy. These studies also found that children’s adjustment was positive. This study extends the research to heterosexual parent couples.

“The high quality of parenting demonstrated by the primary caregiver fathers suggests that more fathers should be encouraged to be highly involved parents.”

The study took place in the United Kingdom between 2017 and 2019,  and involved 41 primary caregiver fathers, 45 primary caregiver mothers, and 41 dual earner couples (both mother and father). The primary caregiver mothers and fathers had been the primary caregivers for at least 6 months, with children from 3 to 6 years old. Their partner was the primary wage earner; some primary caregivers (fathers more than mothers) were also employed part time or worked flexibly from home, but they spent more time caregiving than working. In the dual earner families, both parents were in paid employment and many worked full time. The families were mostly White and highly educated, and had no serious financial difficulties.

Through questionnaires and interviews, the researchers used previously tested measures to assess depression, anxiety, stress, social support, marital quality, the coparenting relationship, parental acceptance/rejection of the child, parenting quality, and children’s behavior. When assessing children’s behavior, the children’s preschool or schoolteacher also completed a questionnaire.

This research confirms a large body of earlier research showing that the parenting behaviors of fathers and mothers are similar, as is their influence on children’s development. Primary caregiver fathers typically describe their role in nurturing terms as fostering a close bond with their child.

In one study, compared to primary earner fathers, primary caregiver fathers showed higher emotional tone and their 12-month-olds showed more positive mood. In another study, very involved fathers had a more playful interaction style than the mothers, though both these mothers and fathers smiled more and imitated their child more than less-involved fathers. In other studies, primary caregiver mothers were more affectionate with their 3-month-olds and their 8- to 12-month-olds than primary caregiver fathers.

Other studies have found that primary caregiver fathers face particular social pressures – social isolation in a mother-dominated world of playgroups and playgrounds, the stigma of adopting a non-traditional role, and less social support. However, in this study, the fathers reported positive well-being. Perhaps the strong marital relationships and coparenting arrangements were enough to compensate for any additional social pressure.

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Involved, vigilant parenting is key to children developing the capacity to regulate their emotions and avoid poor mental health outcomes that can emerge from racism. This confirms findings from earlier research of African American families, with associations between positive parent-child relationships in middle childhood and adolescents having skills to make decisions, pay attention, avoid distractions, set priorities, and control emotions.

In this study, the researchers make the case that, given how typical the experience of the negative effects of racial discrimination is in African American families, it is important to understand these strength-based, cultural parenting assets. Family support services need to understand and build around these assets when delivering preventative interventions for African-American families.

Middle Childhood

Middle childhood is an important stage in child development. This is when children develop a greater sense of self and the capacity to regulate their emotions. Their social world expands during this time as they learn how to engage in wider social settings. Such social competence is associated with numerous positive developmental outcomes in adolescence. Talking to your children about racism is another topic we’ve covered.

In the abovementioned study, African-American mothers were asked how satisfied they were with their children and how happy they were with their relationship with their children. The mothers were also asked questions like, “How often do you know what your child does after school?” “When you discipline your child, how often does the type of discipline you use depend on your mood?” and “How often do you give reasons to your child for your decisions?”

Middle childhood is an important stage in child development. This is when children develop a greater sense of self and the capacity to regulate their emotions.

When the mothers reported experiences of discrimination, they were more likely to report depression and anxiety on their part, as well as strained relationships with their children.

These in turn were associated with a greater likelihood of lower-quality parenting, as assessed by the mother. Both maternal depression/anxiety and lower parenting quality are linked to a greater likelihood of children developing poor self-control and emotion regulation skills.

Results & Conclusions

The study produced one surprising result. African American children who experienced the negative effects of racial discrimination during middle childhood showed a higher likelihood of developing stronger self-regulation and emotional control in early adolescence, which in turn was associated with less depression and greater social competence. This was the same for boys and girls. In some children, exposure to adversity during early childhood may help them self-soothe and regulate emotion, protecting them from adverse impacts on mental health.

However, this unexpected finding does not counteract the overall negative correlations between a family’s experience of racial discrimination and symptoms of depression in children. These links were found both in this and in earlier work by the same researchers.

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