Pathways Linking Parental Relationship Changes, Depressive Symptoms, and Parenting Behaviors to Young Children's Development

• Published date: 01 July 2021
• Author: Melissa A. Barnett,Katherine W. Paschall,Olena Kopystynska,Shannon M. Warren,Melissa A. Curran
• Date: 01 July 2021
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/fare.12494

M A. BUniversity of Arizona

K W. PChild Trends

O KUtah State University

S M. W  M A. CUniversity of Arizona

Pathways Linking Parental Relationship Changes,

Depressive Symptoms, and Parenting Behaviors

to Young Children’s Development

Objective: The current study examined how

parental relationship changes were linked

to observed parenting behaviors, parental

depressive symptoms, and 3-year-old children’s

social–emotional development.

Background: Parental relationship changes

may present risks to young children’swell-being.

The specic processes linking these changes

to child development, however, remain unclear

because these changes are often confounded

with other family risks. We applied an adapted

family stress model to identify family-based

pathways conferring risk to children among

predominantly low-income unmarried families.

Method: Data are from 2,575 families who

participated in the Building Strong Families

study, which included primarily unmarried,

low-income couples transitioning to parent-

hood. Parental relationship changes were

measured as overall changes in parents’roman-

tic relationship status with each other and with

Family Studies and Human Development, Norton School of

Family & Consumer Sciences, University of Arizona, 650

N. Park Avenue, PO Box 210078, Tucson,AZ 85721-0078

(barnettm@arizona.edu).

Key Words: Behavior problems, effortful control, father

involvement, parenting, parentalrelationships.

new partners and multipartner fertility. Struc-

tural equation models (SEM) were estimated to

link these changes directly and indirectly, via

mothers’ and fathers’ parenting behaviors and

depressive symptoms, to children’s behavior

problems and effortful control.

Results: Parental relationship changes were

directly associated with paternal depressive

symptoms and children’s internalizing behav-

iors. Mothers’ and fathers’ parenting behaviors

were independently associated with children’s

behavior problems and effortful control.

Conclusion: The ndings point to the value of

simultaneously considering the observed parent-

ing behaviors and depressive symptoms of moth-

ers and fathers within the context of parent rela-

tionship changes.

Implications: Interventions aimed at strength-

ening low-income unmarried families should

focus on the quality of mothers’ and fathers’ par-

enting to bolster young children’s development

because these parenting behaviors were more

closely associated with child development than

were parental relationship changes.

Parental relationship changes, such as changes

in parents’ romantic relationship status with

each other or with new partners, present risk

Family Relations 70 (July 2021): 905–920905

DOI:10.1111/fare.12494

906 Family Relations

factors for children’s compromised social and

emotional development early in life (Bzostek &

Berger, 2017; Osborne & McLanahan, 2007).

The specic processes linking complex parental

relationship changes to young children’s devel-

opment remain unclear, in part because these

changes are often associated with several con-

founding risks (Cavanagh & Fomby, 2019;

Davies et al., 2019). In this study, we examine

family-based pathways, specically maternal

and paternal depressive symptoms and par-

enting behaviors, linking parental relationship

changes to preschool-age children’s devel-

opment among a sample of predominantly

unmarried low-income families.

We focus on three child development out-

comes: externalizing behaviors, internalizing

behaviors, and self-regulation skills (effort-

ful control). Preschool-age children from

low-income families are at risk for compro-

mised development (Lengua et al., 2007) in

these areas, which are implicated in longitudinal

trajectories of social–emotional development

(Shaw et al., 2003). Identifying specic

family-based pathways conferring develop-

mental risks provides key information for

researchers and practitioners, especially when

this research takes a whole family perspective

and includes fathers (Cabrera et al., 2014; Dyer

et al., 2018).

Conceptual Framework

We test an adapted version of the family stress

model (FSM), a commonly used framework

for illustrating how economic strain under-

mines child development via disruptions in

family functioning (Conger et al., 1992, 2010;

Masarik & Conger, 2017). The FSM posits

that economic strain leads to increased parental

psychological distress, often operationalized

as depressive symptoms (Conger et al., 2010;

Masarik & Conger, 2017), that in turn directly

or through parenting behaviors negatively affect

children’s development. The role of parental

relationship changes in shaping these pathways,

especially during early childhood, is unclear

(Barnett, 2008).

In the present study, within a predominantly

low-income sample, we follow the lead of other

researchers (Conger et al., 2010) who have sub-

stituted other stressors for economic strain in

the FSM. Specically, we test the extent to

which a stressor prevalent among economically

disadvantaged families (i.e., parent relationship

changes) is related to children’s development by

undermining family processes in a manner sim-

ilar to the pathways linking economic strain to

child development in the FSM. Wefocus specif-

ically on parental relationship changes because

reducing these changes—that is, strengthening

families by increasing the stability of parental

romantic relationships—is a consistent target

of federal programs for low-income, unmarried

parents. This focus is based on the associations

with child well-being.

However, the general lack of effectiveness

of these programs (Johnson, 2012) may sug-

gest that we need greater understanding of the

family-based pathways through which parental

relationship changes compromise children’s

development. We conceptualize parental rela-

tionship changes as a stressor that may impact

family functioning and child development

(Hadeld et al., 2018). Parental relationship

changes may impair parental mental health

and the quality of parenting, in turn negatively

impacting child development. See Figure 1 for

our conceptual model illustrating how parental

relationship changes are linked to children’s

behavior problems and effortful control by

increasing parental depressive symptoms and

reducing the quality of parenting behaviors.

Parental Relationship Changes Denitions

Two critical challenges in identifying the

mechanisms by which parental relationship

changes impact young children is inconsistency

in how these changes are operationalized and

the likelihood of simultaneous and cumula-

tive exposure to multiple changes, for both

parents, especially for low-income families

(Beck et al., 2010; Cavanagh & Fomby, 2019;

Hadeld et al., 2018). Increasing evidence

indicates the number of parental relationship

changes children experience in the rst 5years

of life is a risk factor for maladjustment (Beck

et al., 2010; Bzostek & Berger, 2017). Typical

approaches to parental relationship changes

rely on measures of parental, usually maternal,

romantic relationship status transitions (e.g.,

moving from married to single relationship sta-

tus) and/or residential changes (e.g., changing

from residential to nonresidential with father;

Craigie et al., 2010; Hadeld et al., 2018). For

example, Beck et al. (2010) reported that across

the rst four waves of data collection in the