Foster Parenting Styles and Adolescent Mental Health Status

Columbia Univ New York Morningside, New York NY

Investigators

Abstract

[unreadable] DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The primary goal of the current study is to explore whether parenting styles exhibited by foster parents (e.g., non-permanent relative and non-relative caregivers) are associated with positive mental health outcomes among maltreated adolescents in foster care. This study will conduct secondary data analyses using the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being (NSCAW), the first national probability, longitudinal survey of children and families investigated for abuse and neglect in the United States. The current study will focus on a subsample of 254 adolescents (ages 11-15) who have been placed in foster care at the beginning of the survey. This study is guided by Baumrind's (1971, 1972, 1978, 2005) and Maccoby and Martin's (1983) theoretical framework on parenting styles. Accordingly, parenting is organized into two dimensions, responsiveness and demandingness, which interact to form a fourfold parenting style typology: authoritative (high responsiveness, high demandingness), authoritarian (low responsiveness, high demandingness), indulgent (high responsiveness, low demandingness), and neglectful (low responsiveness, low demandingness). This study has the following specific aims: (1) examine the relationship between dimensions of foster parenting (responsiveness, demandingness, and their interaction) and adolescent mental health status (internalizing symptoms, externalizing symptoms) measured 18 months later; (2) identify associations between foster parenting style types (authoritative, authoritarian, indulgent, neglectful) and adolescent mental status (internalizing symptoms, externalizing symptoms) measured 18 months later; and (3) explore the potential moderating effects of neighborhood disadvantage on foster parenting and mental health outcomes. Secondary analyses of the NSCAW data using multivariate models (e.g., survey weighted multiple regression, propensity score weighting analysis) will test the following hypotheses: (1) foster parent dimensions measured at wave 1 (responsiveness, demandingness, and their interaction) are inversely associated with adolescent internalizing and externalizing symptoms at wave 3; (2) specific parenting style types (authoritative, authoritarian, indulgent, neglectful) measured at wave 1 will have a differential impact on adolescent mental health status (internalizing symptoms, externalizing symptoms) measured at wave 3; and (3) where present, the associations between foster parenting style type measured at wave 1 and adolescent mental health status at wave 3 are moderated by neighborhood disadvantage. The proposed study responds to calls for the identification of risk and protective factors influencing the developmental of psychopathology among youth who have been abused and neglected. Moreover, this study seeks to confirm if parenting style theory researched on general population samples applies to maltreated adolescents in foster care. The current study explores whether foster parenting style is associated with positive mental health outcomes among a nationally representative sample of adolescents in foster care. As a result, findings from this study can potentially generalize to large numbers of maltreated adolescents placed in foster care who have an increased risk of developing serious mental health difficulties (Administration for Children & Families, 2003; Curtis & Petit, 1997; McMillen et al., 2005; Pilowsky & Wu, 2006). Given that the clinical needs of foster youth are frequently not met by traditional mental health services (Blumberg, Landsverk, Ellis-MacLeod, Ganger, & Culver, 1996; Burns et al., 1995; Burns et al., 2004; Garland, Landsverk, & Lau, 2003; Glisson, 1996; Lyons & Rogers, 2004; Trupin, Tarico, Low, Jemelka, & McClellan, 1993), identifying protective factors within foster parenting may provide additional means of preventing serious mental health difficulties among adolescents in foster care. [unreadable] [unreadable] [unreadable]