Thesis (M. Soc. Sc.)--University of Hong Kong, 2004. / Also available in print.

Attachment Theory posits that the caregiver has primary responsibility in fostering attachment security; however, children play increasingly active roles in shaping the quality of interactions as they grow beyond infancy (Bowlby, 1969). There has been limited research on transactional relationships between caregivers and children and their associations with attachment. While Interpersonal Theory has historically been utilized to understand adult interpersonal interactions and their associations with relationship quality, it may provide an avenue to explore parent-child transactional processes. Within Interpersonal Theory, interactions can be categorized as complementary and non-complementary. Yet, these unidimensional constructs make it impossible to determine the relative effects of when complementarity and non-complementarity have positive or negative valences. As such, this study investigated 143 mother–preschooler dyads (64 Child Maltreatment [CM] dyads and 79 non-CM dyads) to examine the associations between variations in two novel types complementarity and non-complementarity and attachment security. Positive complementarity included interactions that were warm and affiliative that elicited the same responses in return. Negative complementarity included interactions that were hostile and aversive that elicited those same responses in return. Positive non-complementarity was characterized by warm and affiliative parent behaviors and child hostile and rejecting behaviors. Negative non-complementarity was characterized by disaffiliative and hostile parent behaviors and warm and affiliative child behaviors. Separate logistic regression analyses revealed that positive complementarity and positive non-complementarity were significantly associated with an increased likelihood of secure attachment. Negative complementarity and negative non-complementarity were not significantly associated with an increased likelihood of insecure attachment. Results suggest that the positive valences of complementarity and non-complementarity are associated with attachment security, such that children in dyads where mothers maintained warm and affiliative behaviors with their child, whether the child was connecting and trusting the mother or withdrawing and sulking, were more likely to be securely attached. Thus, a mother’s ability to display positive and sensitive behaviors during moment-to-moment interactions with their child regardless of child’s response is important to a child’s attachment security.

Background: Adolescent-to-Parent Violence and Abuse (APVA) continues to be one of the most hidden forms of family-abuse, remaining unrecognised at a policy level and under-researched at a theoretical level, especially in the United Kingdom. Although research has started to emerge, much of this has focussed on mapping the nature and extent of the phenomena with limited attention given to parents' lived experiences of parenting in the context of the adolescent child-to-parent abuse dynamic, which this study attempts to address. Given the complexities of accessing parent-victims of APVA, qualitative researchers have employed somewhat innovative methods, though Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) as used within the present study has been relatively overlooked having not been previously used in the UK, highlighting the need for additional research from wider perspectives into the area. Aim: With this in mind, the current study aimed to explore the lived experience of parents who describe being violently and/or abused by their adolescent child to gather a richer understanding of how adolescent-to-parent violence and abuse impacts upon the parenting experience. Method: This research employed a qualitative design using semi-structured interviews with 6 parents (5 mothers and 1 father); the majority of whom were in their early to late 40's. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) was used to develop a rich and multi-layered account of participants' experiences. Results: The analysis produced four superordinate themes. These were: 'Not knowing and the search for answers': Needing to understand, "I love him but I don't like him": Facing and avoiding complex emotions, "Like playing chess with the grand master": Parenting amidst abuse and "I won't be defined by fear": Temporality and seeking change. The superordinate themes and corresponding subordinate themes are discussed in relation to the relevant literature. Clinical implications, methodological considerations and directions for future research are also presented. Implications: This research provided insight into the lived experience of being a parent within an APVA dynamic. The research highlighted the challenges faced by parents as they maintain parental responsibility for a child who is perceptibly abusing them and the ways that the current systems and absence of policy serve to maintain this dynamic. It also emphasised the importance of how parents seek to identify causation as a way of negating parental blame and the associated experience of shame which emerged as underpinning wider complex emotions, particularly fear. It also highlighted the need for timely and specific guidance, support and interventions to parents who experience this unique yet increasingly reported form of family-abuse from a Clinical Psychology and wider professional perspective.

This study examined participants' expectations for parental and stepparental responsibilities with respect to child care. Seventy-nine female and seventy-five male participants completed the Parenting Expectations Questionnaire. Participants read a brief scenario about a first married family; a stepmother/biological father family; or a stepfather/biological mother family. They then assigned responsibility for 38 child care tasks on a 5-point scale from "man always" to "woman always". The general findings were: 1) participants assigned less responsibility to stepparents (stepmothers and stepfathers) for child care than they assigned to biological parents; 2) there was less consensus about appropriate "parental" behaviour for stepparents as compared to that for first married parents; and 3) participants with stepfamily experience assigned less responsibility to stepparents than did participants from first married families. / Arts, Faculty of / Psychology, Department of / Graduate

Clinical child psychology supposedly bridges the gap between clinical and developmental psychology. Nonetheless, there has been a dearth of communication between the two disciplines. For example, there have been no investigations as to whether various behavioral parenting techniques are differentially effective with children of different ages or whether the developmental literature on the use of rationales and modeling with children might be relevant for behavioral parent training. The purpose of this study was to examine whether maternal use of an extinction (ignoring) procedure was differentially effective depending upon the age of the child and whether its effectiveness could be enhanced by the use of verbal rationales and/or modeling procedures. Experimental sessions took place in a laboratory playroom where the mother issued a set of 20 standard commands to the child. Eighty mother-child pairs were recruited through advertisement and randomly assigned to one of four conditions: Ignoring (mothers implemented an ignoring procedure contingent upon child noncompliance), Rationale (in addition to the above, mothers provided the children with a standardized verbal rationale prior to the session), Modeling (in addition to the ignoring procedure and the rationale, mothers demonstrated the procedure to the child prior to the session), and Control (no consequences for noncompliance). Children were from one of two age ranges: 3-4% years or 5%-7% years. Observational measures of child behavior included initiated compliance (within 5 seconds), completed compliance (within 1 minute), and inappropriate behavior (whining, crying, etc.)- Interobserver agreement was at least 8770 for each behavior. A Parental Satisfaction Questionnaire was developed to assess the social validity of the various procedures. Data were analyzed by analyses of variance. With respect to both measures of compliance, children in the Rationale and Modeling groups were more compliant than children in the Control or Ignoring groups. Older children were more compliant than younger children, regardless of group. With respect to inappropriate behavior, children in the Ignoring group were significantly more inappropriate than children in the other three groups. There were no systematic effects of age. On the Parental Satisfaction Questionnaire, mothers in the Rationale and Modeling Groups were more satisfied with the parenting procedure than mothers in the Ignoring group. These results indicate that having parents provide a verbal rationale and/or model ignoring prior to its use enhances child compliance to maternal commands, reduces the extinction burst phenomenon associated with ignoring, and enhances parental satisfaction with the ignoring procedure. The procedures were equally effective with children of different ages. More generally, the results indicate the relevance of empirical research in developmental psychology for enhancing the effects of child behavior therapy. / Arts, Faculty of / Psychology, Department of / Graduate

Child abuse has been studied for the past twenty years in an attempt to define it, delineate etiology and suggest treatment modalities. Inadequate methodological controls and therapeutic assumptions incestuously shared have resulted in a theory that defines parents as bad, sick or ignorant but definitely as the culprits. More recently, sociological explanations have been written to present a psychosocial model for abuse. The purpose of this study was to explore whether a relationship exists between child abuse and a mother's knowledge of growth and development. Two groups of single parent, female headed families were chosen in the community. Twenty-three mothers participated in a thirty card growth and development sort, derived by the author from a developmental profile by Alpern and Boll (1972), indicating their understanding of when a child could first perform the behavior. The mothers were also assigned a number on an abuse continuum. The resulting data and demographic information were correlated using a Spearman Rank Order Correlation Coefficient and Chi-Squared Contingency analysis at the 0.05 level of significance. No significant relationship was found between level of abuse or knowledge of growth and development. Some significant associations were found within the demographic characteristics, with implications for study of variable clusters. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Nursing, School of / Graduate

The general purpose of this study was to consider the relationship between an individual's perception of his parent-child experiences and the adequacy of a naive cognitive model to describe his judgements of others.

The purpose of this investigation was to (a) use the positive routines procedure to decrease child noncompliance and the time it takes the child to comply (latency) at bedtime, (b) to assess treatment fidelity, and (c) to record objectively parent behavior. Research was conducted with four children and five parents in their homes. The treatment was explained to each parent and introduced to each child after the baseline phase. Positive routines requires the parent to implement a low-stimulation “routine” at the time the child naturally gets sleepy. The routine gradually begins earlier so that by the end of treatment, it is completed at the time the parent originally attempted to establish bedtime. The data reveal that with high treatment fidelity, the treatment was effective in reducing bedtime noncompliance, latency, and parental reinforcing behaviors. The data also supported the notion that parent behavior can be controlled by child behavior.

Magister Artium (Child and Family Studies) - MA(CFS) / Parents become the first teachers of the child and therefore the parent-child relationship is important for the development of a child. Parents who have a child with a disability are often more challenged than parents who do not. In South Africa, there are programmes and policies which are implemented to support parents or primary caregivers who have children with disabilities; however, there is no data or reviews available that provide information regarding the capability of parental strategies to ensure the health and well-being of their children with disabilities.

archives@tulane.edu / Background Few studies have examined the association between parenting quality and behavioral adjustment in children and asthma incidence. Medication non-adherence is a proposed mechanism for the association between caregiver stress and asthma morbidity, but research on the association is limited. Aims To examine the association between parent-child relationship and child’s behavioral adjustment and asthma incidence, and to explore the association between caregiver stress and medication non-adherence in children with asthma. Methods Secondary analyses were conducted in two study populations: a birth cohort study in the United Kingdom and an intervention trial of children with asthma in inner-city New Orleans. The first two analyses defined asthma by parent report and current asthma medication use at five or seven years. Mother-child relationship and child’s behavioral adjustment were measured with the Child-Parent Relationship Scale (CPRS) and the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ), respectively, at three years. Caregiver stress and medication non-adherence were measured using Cohen’s Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-4) and caregiver self-report, respectively, at baseline and twelve months. Results Among families with the most major life events, children with mothers reporting poorest compared to best CPRS had an adjusted OR=2.8 (95% CI: 2.3-3.6) for asthma. Adjusted odds ratios for the association between abnormal versus normal SDQ at 3 years and asthma at 5 or 7 years was 1.2 (95% CI: 1.0-1.5). Adjusted odds ratios for non-adherence due to running out of medications were 6.8 (95% CI: 1.0-47.6) in high versus normal stress caregivers. Conclusions Increased risk of asthma was observed among those with the poorest mother-child relationships and the most major life events, and in children with abnormal behavioral adjustment. A statistically significant adjusted association between caregiver stress and overall medication non-adherence was not observed, but an association between increased caregiver stress and non-adherence due to running out of medications was suggested. / 1 / Fritha Morrison