ABSTRACT Conduct problems are a common childhood mental health problem representing a significant proportion of young clients referred for occupational therapy. Children with conduct problems, especially the early onset subtype, can experience a difficult developmental trajectory and this can also impact family members, peers and the broader community. The contours of family life in Australia, and many other western countries, have changed dramatically over the last few decades. For example, we have witnessed a large increase in single parent households, a dramatic increase in maternal employment, declines in fertility rates to well below replacement level, delayed parenthood, and an increase in divorce rates. Consequently both parents and children must navigate a much more varied and in some cases more challenging and stressful set of life course choices and pathways than in the past. For some this will result in changes to parenting practices and children’s time use, potentially exposing children to a higher risk for developing conduct problems. While there is evidence to support the important role played by parents in this context, the relative impact of how and with whom children spend their time has not been closely examined. The aims of this study are to understand how young Australian children spend their time and to examine how children’s time use is related to their risk of developing conduct problems. More specifically it aims to investigate the social context of activities in which children are involved, the extent to which these activities involve physical exertion, structure, and rest and recuperative qualities in relation to conduct problems. In addition, children’s exposure to out-of-family care, differences in parenting practices and socioeconomic factors are also considered. The study is unique in having access to recent, high quality, national level Australian survey data that combines both detailed information on children’s time use, validated scales measuring children’s conduct problems, as well as a range of other variables necessary to accurately measure the relationships between them. These data come from the 4 to 5 year old child cohort from Wave 1 of the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC) survey. The LSAC is the first comprehensive national longitudinal study of Australian children and is funded by the Australian Government Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs (FaHCSIA). The LSAC follows the lives of two cohorts of approximately 5,000 children each, an infant cohort (0-1 years old in Wave 1) and a child cohort (4-5 years old in Wave 1). This study examines the 4-5 year cohort only. A key strength of the LSAC is its use of time diaries to collect detailed information on children’s time use. It is the analyses of data from these diaries that is unique to the current study of conduct problems and allows the presentation of the first results that combine detailed measures of children’s time use with conduct disorder outcomes. First, descriptive analyses reveal the prevalence of children at risk of developing conduct problems, the variety of parenting practices and children’s time use profiles. Approximately 29% of Australian children aged 4 to 5 years are identified as being “at risk” of conduct problems. Parenting practices for children demonstrate high levels of warmth, reasoning, consistency, and low hostility. Children are reported to experience adequate amounts of sleep or rest, on average 11 hours per day. Over a quarter of children do not engage in moderate to vigorous physical activities, particularly on weekdays, over half do not engage in structured activities on weekdays and well over three-quarters do not engage in structured activities on weekends. Children are highly supervised by adults for approximately 10 hours a day either with or without the presence of peers during their waking hours, whereas almost three quarters of children do not spend time alone and over a half do not spend time with peers only. Second, two-way ANOVAs and random effects models are used to compare children’s time use by their experience of conduct problems. Results derived from the two-way ANOVAs indicate that children at risk of conduct problems spend significantly fewer hours being restful on weekdays, significantly more hours without peers under adult supervision on weekends and significantly fewer hours with peers under adult supervision on weekends than those not at risk. Results from the random effects models show that children at risk of developing conduct problems spend significantly more hours bike riding and significantly fewer hours being restful than those not at risk. Overall these results suggest that children at risk of conduct problems used time differently from those not at risk, particularly those aspects of time which are restful, involve bike riding, and in supervised social contexts. Third, chi-square tests and univariate logistic regression both affirm a higher risk of boys developing conduct problems (1.31 times more likely) than girls. Multivariate logistic regression with random effects is used to model the risk for developing conduct problems for boys and girls. The female model indicates that girls are at lower risk of conduct problems only if they are exposed to consistent and less hostile parenting practice and not have sleep problem reported by parents. The male model suggests that boys are vulnerable to more risk factors and are at lower risk of developing conduct problems if they have fathers who have completed tertiary education, are exposed to consistent and less hostile parenting, do not ride a bike on weekdays, spend less time in exercise on weekends, and do not have sleep problem reported by parents. Overall, the findings of this thesis lead to three main conclusions. First, males are at heightened risk for developing conduct problems and are subjected to more risk factors than girls. Second, parenting practice is affirmed in this thesis as the paramount predictor of risk for 4 to 5 year old children developing conduct problems. Third, the effects of time use depending on the innate quality and structure of activity are considered important for young children’s risk of developing conduct problems, and this is particularly pertinent for young boys. These results support the importance of family-centred services and time arrangements for activity participation when working with children at risk of or diagnosed with conduct problems. It also affirms the necessity to attend to parenting practices which may be described as hostile and inconsistent while at the same time highlighting the importance of fathers to their sons risk profile. These findings contribute to our understanding of children’s time use as a contributor to the behavioural wellbeing of children, especially young boys.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/254117 |
| Creators | Mong-lin Yu |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Detected Language | English |
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