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Stressors, Quality of the Child–Caregiver Relationship, and Children's Mental Health Problems After Parental Death: The Mediating Role of Self-System Beliefs

Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology volume 34, pages 212–229 (2006)Cite this article

Investigated whether three self-system beliefs, fear of abandonment, coping efficacy, and self-esteem, mediated the relations of stressors and caregiver–child relationship quality with concurrent and prospective internalizing and externalizing problems in a sample of children who had experienced parental death in the previous 2.5 years. The cross-sectional sample consisted of 340 children ages 7–16 and their surviving parent/current caregiver; the longitudinal analyses employed a subset of this sample that consisted of 100 children and their parents/caregivers who were assessed at three time points. A multirater, multimethod measure of caregiver–child relationship quality and a multirater measure of children's mental health problems were used. The cross-sectional model supported a mediational relation for fear of abandonment, coping efficacy, and self-esteem. The three-wave longitudinal model showed that fear of abandonment at Time 2 mediated the relation between stressors at Time 1 and internalizing and externalizing problems at Time 3. Implications of these findings for understanding the development of mental health problems in parentally bereaved children and designing interventions for this at-risk group are discussed.

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Notes

  1. A latent variable approach was not used due to a very low ratio of participants to parameters in the models tested (Bentler & Chou, 1988).

  2. A latent variable approach was not used due to a very low ratio of participants to parameters in the models tested (Bentler & Chou, 1988).

  3. The error terms for the same reporters were correlated in the model. The correlation of caregiver reports of internalizing and externalizing was .46. The correlation of child reports of internalizing and externalizing was .36. The loadings of caregiver and child reports of internalizing on the overall internalizing factor were .48 and .49, respectively. The loadings of caregiver and child reports of externalizing on the overall externalizing factor were .54 and .53, respectively. The correlation of cross-reporter measures of internalizing and externalizing was .58.

  4. As convention for model fit, for both the cross-sectional and longitudinal models, all Time 1 variables were treated as correlated. However, for the simplicity of presentation, these correlations were omitted from the figures of the longitudinal models. The estimated correlations were consistent with those shown in Table IV.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Support for this research was provided by National Institute of Mental Health Grant P30 M439246-15 to establish a Preventive Intervention Research Center at Arizona State University, Grant 1R01 MH49155-05 to evaluate a preventive intervention for bereaved families, and Grant 2R01 MH49155-06 to conduct a 6-year follow-up of a preventive intervention for bereaved families. The authors are grateful to Laura Legge and Rachel Haine for their help in collecting and managing the data set and to the families for their participation.

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  1. Prevention Research Center, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, USA

    Sharlene A. Wolchik, Jenn-Yun Tein, Irwin N. Sandler & Tim S. Ayers

  2. Prevention Research Center, Arizona State University, P.O. Box 876005, Tempe, Arizona, 85287-6005, USA

    Sharlene A. Wolchik

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Wolchik, S.A., Tein, JY., Sandler, I.N. et al. Stressors, Quality of the Child–Caregiver Relationship, and Children's Mental Health Problems After Parental Death: The Mediating Role of Self-System Beliefs. J Abnorm Child Psychol 34, 212–229 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-005-9016-5

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KEY WORDS:

  • mental health problems of parentally bereaved children
  • negative life events
  • self-system beliefs
  • fear of abandonment
  • self-esteem
  • coping efficacy