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Relation Between Parent Psychiatric Symptoms and Youth Problems: Moderation through Family Structure and Youth Gender

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Abstract

Links between parents’ psychiatric symptoms and their children’s behavioral and emotional problems have been widely documented in previous research, and the search for moderators of this association has begun. However, family structure (single versus dual-parent households) has received little attention as a potential moderator, despite indirect evidence that risk may be elevated in single-parent homes. Two other candidate moderators—youth gender and age—have been tested directly, but with inconsistent findings across studies, perhaps in part because studies have differed in whether they used youth clinical samples and in which informants (parents vs. youths) reported on youth problems. In the present study, we examined these three candidate moderators using a sample of exclusively clinic-referred youths (N = 333, 34 % girls, aged 7–14,) and assessing youth problems through both parent- and youth-reports. Both family structure and youth gender emerged as robust moderators across parent and youth informants. Parent symptoms were associated with youth internalizing and externalizing problems in single-parent but not dual-parent homes; and parent symptoms were associated with youth internalizing problems among boys, but not girls. The moderator findings suggest that the risks associated with parent psychopathology may not be uniform but may depend, in part, on family structure and youth gender.

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Notes

  1. Several studies suggest that links between parent symptoms and youth problems are complex and bidirectional (e.g. Kim et al. 2009). Identification of causal pathways is beyond the scope of the present paper, which focuses instead on factors that moderate the strength of association. Identifying such moderators may help inform later investigations into causal patterns.

  2. Notably, caregivers participating in this study were 90.7 % female. This gender imbalance may render findings more relevant to relations between mother symptoms and youth problems than between father symptoms and youth problems. However, for brevity, we will refer to participating caregivers as “parents” in this study.

  3. To address potentially confounding effects of family income and ethnicity, we also tested the models presented including these factors as covariates. Income was measured in eight brackets of $20,000, from $0 to $140,000 or greater. Ethnicity was dummy-coded into seven separate dummy variables, each representing one ethnic category. Findings for all models (both parent- and youth- report) remained significant even after including income and ethnicity as a covariate (for youth-reported internalizing problems, F(11, 311) = 7.95, R 2 = 0.03, p < 0.01; for youth-reported externalizing problems, F(11, 311) = 10.07, R 2 = 0.03, p < 0.01; for parent-reported internalizing problems, F(11,311) = 5.84, R 2 = 0.02, p < 0.05; for parent-reported internalizing problems, F(11, 311) = 8.58, R 2 = 0.05, p < 0.01).

  4. While we lacked sufficient statistical power to assess moderating effects of parent gender, it remains theoretically plausible that moderating effects of family structure and youth gender might differ for a mixed-gender sample of caregivers versus a sample of exclusively female caregivers. To test this possibility within our sample, we re-tested all significant models excluding the 9.3 % of caregivers who were male. All significant findings for all models (both parent- and youth- report) identified in our initial analyses with the full sample remained significant, and no additional effects emerged as significant, after excluding male caregivers from analyses. For Family Structure x Parent Symptoms models: youth-reported internalizing problems, F(3, 304) = 5.36, R 2 = 0.02, p = 0.02; youth-reported externalizing problems, F(3, 304) = 6.58, R 2 = 0.02, p = 0.01; parent-reported internalizing problems, F(3,304) = 6.73, R 2 = 0.07, p < 0.01; parent-reported internalizing problems, F(3, 304) = 11.56, R 2 = 0.11, p < 0.01. For Youth Gender x Parent Symptoms models: youth-reported internalizing problems, F(3, 301) = 7.28, R 2 = 0.02, p < 01; youth-reported externalizing problems, F(3, 301) = 5.34, R 2 = 0.02, p = 02.

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Acknowledgments

The research was supported by grants from the Norlien Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, and the Annie E. Casey Foundation. We are grateful to Mei Yi Ng and Nancy Lau for their thoughtful comments on an earlier draft.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Psychology Department, Harvard University, William James Hall, 33 Kirkland Street, Cambridge, MA, 02138, USA

    Jessica L. Schleider & John R. Weisz

  2. Psychology Department, University of California, Los Angeles, 1285 Franz Hall, Box 951963, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, USA

    Bruce F. Chorpita

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  1. Jessica L. Schleider
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  2. Bruce F. Chorpita
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Correspondence to Jessica L. Schleider.

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Schleider, J.L., Chorpita, B.F. & Weisz, J.R. Relation Between Parent Psychiatric Symptoms and Youth Problems: Moderation through Family Structure and Youth Gender. J Abnorm Child Psychol 42, 195–204 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-013-9780-6

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