Browsing by Subject "Discontinuity"
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Item Maternal Mood and Comorbid Personality Disorders: Attachment Development from Infancy to Young Adulthood(2019-06) Ruiz, SarahMaternal psychopathology, particularly maternal mood disorders, is an important developmental context for attachment development, as maternal sensitivity and other caregiving behaviors necessary for a secure attachment may be impaired. While maternal depression in relation to offspring attachment has been well examined, less attention has been given to the impact of maternal psychiatric comorbidity, particularly between maternal mood and personality disorders (PD) on attachment development. Leveraging a prospective longitudinal study of well and psychiatrically ill mothers and two of their children (60 children of well mothers, 75 children of mothers with comorbid mood and PDs, and 57 children of mothers with mood disorders), this study seeks to further examine the role of maternal psychiatric illness on attachment development over three time points, early and middle childhood, and young adulthood. In study 1, I characterized the sample using cross-sectional analyses to predict attachment at each time point. Although I predicted that mothers in the mood and comorbid groups would have offspring with greater incidence of insecure attachment across all developmental periods, my hypotheses were not confirmed as maternal psychiatric mood and comorbid group membership did not predict attachment in early, middle, and young adulthood. The study provided preliminary evidence that maternal bipolar disorder predicted lower log odds of secure attachment in early childhood, and that offspring of mothers with higher Cluster B dimensional scores had increasing logs odds of being securely attached in early childhood. For study 2, I predicted that offspring of mothers with mood disorders would be characterized by greater discontinuity over development, moving towards insecurity over time, and ran exploratory analyses to examine attachment discontinuity in offspring of mothers in the comorbid group. Results suggest that for offspring of mothers with maternal personality Cluster C diagnosis, attachment across development may be characterized as discontinuous with increasing log odds of secure attachment from early to middle childhood. Offspring of mother with Cluster A dimensional scores also demonstrated decreasing log odds of being securely attached across development. These results expand upon our existing understanding of maternal psychopathology on offspring attachment development, and offers preliminary evidence on attachment in the context of maternal comorbid psychiatric illnesses with PDs. However, results should be considered in light of limitations of the study, including sample size and general sparse findings, and await further replication and extension. This study offers a preliminary understanding of maternal mental illness, beyond maternal depression, and extends the current literature by examining the role of maternal comorbidity on cross sectional and longitudinal offspring attachment outcomes.Item Relationship tension and contextual stress as factors promoting discontinuity in parenting quality across time.(2010-08) Hesemeyer, Paloma Shon-nieThe study of dynamic predictors of discontinuity in parenting quality over time has been largely absent from the literature on the etiology of parenting. Yet ecological and family systems theories predict that parenting should be impacted by changes in the familial and extra-familial context in which the parent-child relationship develops. The present study examined the effects of change in life stress and change in romantic relationship quality, and the interaction between the two, on change in observed parenting quality over time. Participants (N = 168), drawn from a 34-year longitudinal study of risk and adaptation, were observed in mother-child interactions when the children were 24 months, 42 months, and 13 years old. Parents also reported their experiences of life stress and romantic relationship tension across this time period. Path models were used to examine change in observed parenting quality over time as a result of changes in romantic relationship quality, changes in extra-familial life stress, and the interaction between the two. While results were generally not consistent with hypotheses, significant interactions between relationship quality and life stress, and significant gender differences, emerged consistently across models. This highlights the need for future studies to examine the effects of multiple contextual variables on discontinuity in parenting, and the ways in which these contextual factors interact to predict change in parenting. It also emphasizes the importance of studying the etiology of both father-child and mother-child relationships and the mechanisms underlying change in opposite-sex and same-sex parent-child relationships. Finally, results illustrate the methodological and theoretical complexity of studying the dynamic nature of parent-child relationships and the ways in which they change over time.