The Transition to Parenthood and the Family System: Links from Grandparents, Parents, and Infants to Perinatal Medical Risk and Early Parent Affect
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Date
2022-10-04
Authors
Loi, Elizabeth
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Publisher
University of Oregon
Abstract
Biopsychosocial factors in early childhood set the foundation for later neurocognitive and language competence. This dissertation aimed to identify and characterize the early psychosocial correlates of perinatal medical risk and parent affect. Prior research has documented associations between both perinatal medical risk and parenting behavior and child functional outcomes across a wide array of developmental domains, including cognition and language. However, perinatal medical risk and parent affect do not emerge out of a vacuum. Rather, they are formed against the backdrop of, and in response to, factors embedded within the family system across time and among individuals.
In three sub-studies, this dissertation sought to elucidate the multigenerational psychosocial factors associated with outcomes in pregnancy, birth, and parenting across the transition to parenthood. Participants were three generations within 137 individual families who took part in both the Oregon Adolescent Depression Project (OADP) and the Infant Development Study (IDS). The proband participants were adolescents who enrolled in the OADP; this cohort and their partners represented Generation 2 (G2) of the overall dissertation project. The parents of the G2 participants constituted the Generation 1 (G1) cohort, while the infant children of the G2 participants represented Generation 3 (G3). Indices of environmental context, psychological adaptation, relationship dynamics, and affect at both family and individual levels across the three generations were collected between the G2 cohort’s adolescence through the early period of their transition to parenthood. Analyses sought to broadly identify and characterize the links among grandparental, parental, and child psychological and relational functioning and outcomes in perinatal medical risk and parent affect. Results across the series of three studies revealed a lack of clear links between the majority of factors sampled from the familial ecology and the outcomes of perinatal medical risk and parent affect, likely due to restricted power resulting from the relatively small sample size. However, in support of the view of the parent-child relationship as mutually reinforcing, infant positive affect was related to parent positive affect. The implications of these findings and proposed areas for ongoing research are discussed.
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Keywords
infant affect, medical risk, parent affect, parenting behavior, perinatal, transition to parenthood