College of Education
Permanent URI for this communityhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/1647
The collections in this community comprise faculty research works, as well as graduate theses and dissertations..
Browse
2 results
Search Results
Item Maternal Adolescent Parenting Behavior and Child Aggressive and Inattentive Behavior: Findings from the Early Head Start Research and Evaluation Project(2008-11-17) Guner, Bella Mironovna; Klein, Elisa L; Jones Harden, Brenda; Human Development; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Adolescent parenting is associated with a wide variety of risk factors for both the mother (Berlin, Brady-Smith, & Brooks-Gunn, 2002) and child (Moore & Brooks-Gunn, 2002). Understanding the pathways leading toward poor parenting practices, and the subsequent influences on child aggressive and inattentive behavior may yield important information for intervention efforts on the part of adolescent families. The current study examines which maternal characteristics influence parenting behavior in a high risk sample of adolescent mothers and their toddlers, using Belsky's (1984) parenting process model. The purpose of the study was to: 1) examine whether maternal age, depression, or stress influenced positive and negative parenting behavior, 2) examine the influence of positive and negative parenting behavior on child aggressive and inattentive behavior, and 3) examine whether positive parenting would mediate the association between maternal characteristics and child aggressive and inattentive behavior. Data from the Early Head Start Research and Evaluation dataset was used to examine the aforementioned questions. The sample consisted of 319 mothers ages 15-19 and their toddlers ages 2-3 years. Heirarchical regression analyses revealed that maternal depression predicted higher levels of negative parenting behavior, younger adolescent mothers are more likely to engage in punitive parenting behavior than older adolescents, and maternal stress predicted lower levels of positive and higher levels of negative parenting behavior. Logistic regression analyses revealed that adolescent mothers who engaged in positive parenting behavior were less likely to have children who engaged in aggressive and inattentive behavior, and parents who engaged in negative parenting behavior were more likely to have children who engaged in aggressive and inattentive behavior. Mediational analyses revealed that positive parenting behavior mediated the association between maternal stress and child aggressive and inattentive behavior. These findings suggest that maternal characteristics are an important factor to consider in parenting behavior, and that despite the difficulties faced by adolescent mothers, there is room for positive parenting, which may mitigate the influence of maternal stress. The findings from this study indicate that intervention efforts may benefit from focusing on teaching adolescent mothers how to engage in positive parenting behaviors with their toddlers, thereby reducing the risk for future child aggressive and inattentive behaviors.Item Relational Aggression Among Girls and Boys with Emotional/Behavioral Disorders in a Special School Setting(2005-12-04) Sutch, Zina B; Harris, Karen R.; Special Education; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The purpose of this study was to determine if two factors, relational aggression (RA) and overt aggression (OA), emerge using the Children's Social Behavior Scale - Self Report (CSBS-S) with students with emotional/behavioral disorders (EBD) in a special school setting; to determine if students with EBD exhibit relation aggression (RA) or overt aggression (OA), as measured by the CSBS-S; and to determine if there was a relationship between these types of aggression and three variables: age, gender and IQ. The classroom teacher administered the CSBS-S to 130 students with EBD, ages seven to twenty years old, in their special school classrooms during the school day. Although RA and OA did not emerge as two distinct factors with this population, two new factors did emerge and were identified as verbal/physical aggression (VPA) and exclusion type aggression (EXA). VPA included all overt, physical and verbal behaviors and EXA included only behaviors in which a target child was excluded from the group. Students with EBD differentiated between all overt physical and verbal aggressive behaviors and exclusionary behaviors. A possible implication of these results is that students with EBD do not differentiate between RA and OA and view all aggression, with the exception of exclusion, as a single type of aggression. Students with EBD did exhibit RA and OA. However the percentage differences between genders was not significant and the means and standard deviations of scores were similar, suggesting that in this setting, with these students, both boys and girls are similarly aggressive. IQ was a significant predictor for RA, OA, and VPA, while age was only a significant predictor for OA. The relationships between IQ and the four types of aggressions was negative which implied that as IQ increased, these three aggressions decreased. Although the CSBS-S was not a valid measure of RA and OA with students with EBD, two new variables were identified, VPA and EXA. It was recommended that further studies include interviews, focus groups and observations in order to better determine how students, especially girls, with EBD differentiate and perceive aggression.