ATTACHMENT AND EARLY ONSET OF CONDUCT PROBLEMS

University Of Washington, Seattle WA

Investigators

Linked publications & trials

Abstract

DESCRIPTION (Adapted from Applicant's Abstract): Although a number of factors that place children at psychological and developmental risk have been identified, less is known about the pathways linking these factors and predisposing children to poor outcomes, including conduct problems. This lack of understanding is especially pronounced for the children of very young mothers, who are at higher risk for a host of social, developmental, and behavioral problems when compared with children of older mothers. The proposed research will extend an existing longitudinal study of adolescent mothers to examine early developmental trajectories in their children that result in conduct problems (with and without co-morbidity for ADHA and internalizing problems) by the end of the first grade year. Literature on child conduct problems shows that risk factors cluster in four domains: family adversity factors, parental management and socialization factors, child characteristics, and attachment relations during infancy and early childhood. Among the risk domains, parental management has been studied most extensively and current preventive approaches most often emphasize teaching adolescent mothers parenting and child management skills. If more were known about how factors in the other domains operate to mitigate or exacerbate risk, a wider variety of intervention targets might be identified. Recent research has demonstrated that attachment relations are amenable to intervention. The role of attachment in parenting by adolescent mothers had not yet been extensively examined. The proposed research will examine the protective and risk effects of adolescent child-mother attachment relations in infancy (child's age of 12 months) and during the preschool period (child's age of 4.5) in the context of factors in the three other risk domains. As we learn under what conditions attachment security may be protective for children of adolescent mothers, attachment relations become an important target for preventive interventions.