Intervention-Induced Changes In Mother-Child Coping

Divorce is one of the most common happenings in the world experienced by children. Most children go through different adjustments to become comfortable with the fact that their parents are not together anymore. Children of divorced parents are prone to lifelong effects. Seventy-five to eighty percent of children have divorced parents and twenty-five percent of those children have serious social, emotional, or psychological problems for the rest of their life. Most adults think that it is best for parents to stay together for the sake of their child because having two parents in different households can become difficult for the child socially and academically.

(2004). Mother-Child Discourse in Two Contexts: Links With Child Temperament, Attachment Security, and Socioemotional Competence. Developmental Psychology, 40(6), 979-992.

With the large and growing number of divorce rates, research is now discussing the effects it has on the children of divorced parents. Now divorce does not just impact the individuals going through it, but their children as well. Not only do children have to live with one or the other parent, have shared custody, or various other living arrangements that may change, but their entire life that they knew changes. Research is

The rapid epidemic of divorce in the United States within the last 20 years has affected more than one half of the families in the United States. In the past, we have viewed divorce as a short term crisis and not as a longitudinal view of the effects divorce might bring. Divorce does affect children. However, it is not the divorce that is the problem; it is the ongoing conflict between the parents and the child’s coping mechanisms in their own stages of development. Counseling, family therapy, and also having a divorce mediation are all successful ways of coping with the family.

The mothers provided detailed accounts of the child’s behavior (progress at school, peer adjustment, relationships in the family) and how she responded to such conduct. The interviews with the children consisted of the Child and Adolescent Functioning and Environment Schedule (CAFE), which is a standardized interview and assessment. The questionnaires were the Expression of Affection Inventory and the Conflict Tactics Scale. Within these responses from mother and child, the researchers paid close attention to the the mother’s warmth, sensitivity and control with the child and the child’s perceptions of these maternal qualities. The results were then rated according to a standardized coding scheme and multivariate analyses of covariance (MANCOVAs) were used once significance group differences were determined. These specifically addressed father-absent vs. father-present and lesbian vs. single heterosexual mothers.

The independent variable in this study will be a social support intervention. The intervention will take place over the course of one year. A family social support intervention will be developed and executed in multiple locations across the Midwest. The support intervention will be focused on promoting long-term increases in communication and support from families of nonnormative parents. Families will meet with a professional every other week for 12 months to reduce family strain and increase family support. To determine if this intervention increased social support, The Social

Specifically, trying to determine whether or not the factors can be adjustable and what coping processes had an impact on children that are exposed to high levels of stressors, such as a divorce. In addition to the study, researchers inspected the relations between program-induced changes in parenting and children coping through the processes by testing whether or not experimentally; did these induced changes in parenting, account for any provisionally induced changes in coping through the processes. The research was broken into several models: short term mediation model, which was a follow up after 6 months and a long term mediation which was a follow up after 6 years, both follow ups were conclusive with effects improving the quality of a mother child relationship leading to improvements with coping during post divorce. The reasoning of the trials indicated that participation from the mothers in the program significantly reduced the child mental health problems and improved parenting with effective coping processes through effective

Dr. Hart wrote in his book, ?Helping Children Survive Divorce,? that ?Every divorced child is likely to be an angry [in a clinical sense] child.? He also wrote on page 77, that divorce is a major learning experience with far-reaching consequences in regard to the child?s personality, attitudes, behaviors, and abilities (Hart, 1996). It is important for parent?s to relinquish any self-serving attitudes understanding that they are not the only ones affected by the divorce. Modeling is one of the ways that children learn appropriate attitudes and social skills. There are methodologies to improve the resiliency of children of divorce.

After examining the short-term and long-term relationships between mother and child, the study addresses the possibility of differential contributions of these dimensions various when it comes to parenting. The three wave prospective mediational analyses revealed that intervention-induced improvements in relationship quality led to increases in coping efficacy at 6 months and to increases in coping efficacy and active coping at 6 years. Tests of the mediated effects were significant for all 3 indirect

A brief overview of the literature on the subject used for this report will display that many studies built upon each other and came to similar conclusions. Across all the studies it was established that divorce was normally the first very stressful event the children had to cope with, but it unfortunately also diminished the coping resources available to the child, which would help them take up a healthy coping strategy. Thus, the effect of coping in children of

The present study will examine various aspects of parent-child dyads at-risk for relationship difficulties. There are three main objectives to this study. The first objective it to relate different indices of parent-child relationships such as: attachment security, parental sensitivity and emotional availability, to assess their relationship quality. It is hypothesized that there will be a relationship between all indices.

Stress in children are situations that produce anxiety and require them to adapt or change. Family stressors such as divorce, domestic violence, and poverty have a tremendous affect on preschool children and are ultimately detrimental to their development. Although stress is normal for children to experience, preschoolers are not resilient towards stressors and are highly affected by them. The effects of stressors on children are not minimal either. Not only do family stressors affect children's’ behavior in the preschool classroom, but it influences their development and overall future. This makes it that much more important for parents and childcare providers to be aware and help/guide children.

As a parent and in my experience working with children, there are a multitude of ways one can make a difference in the life of a child. Parental resilience was one of the “Five Protective Factors” and I feel it can make a big impact on the well being of a child. For instance, if a family is going through a family emergency being resilient toward the circumstances will assist the child in coping with the crisis. As an educator being knowledgeable about parenting and child development can make a difference in both the lives of the child and the parents as well. For instance, if a parent is having an increasingly difficult time controlling their child’s behavior at home, seeking assistance from educators can play an important role. Furthermore,

These include academic deterioration, antisocial and delinquent behaviors, anxiety, low self-esteem, and depression. Early promiscuity, relationship difficulties, and illicit drug use are also noted. Other studies correlate resiliency in adulthood as one product of living in a conflictual family system”(Rich et al., 2007 p.164). The effects of divorce vary depending on the situation and the child. “Hess and Camara found that many children of divorce suffer severe emotional consequences such as depression, anger, anxiety, and withdrawal, any of which, if prolonged, can have a negative impact on the child’s overall emotional development. It is also reported adjustment problems in the area of cognitive, emotional, and social development among children of divorce as well. In addition, parental separation has been found to be particularly stressful for adolescents”(Bornstein and Walters, 1988 p.248).

Divorce and its effects on children are common issues that are on the rise in the world today. Divorce affects more than just the married couple. Children often bear the brunt of divorce, which makes divorce a complicated decision for most parents. Understanding the effects divorce has on a child is important to know exactly why a child acts a certain way. A divorce can affect a child psychologically, intellectually, and even behaviorally. Children can suffer physiologically from things like depression, intellectually by having trouble in school and behaviorally by having trouble in social settings. Legally, a divorce is a single event, but from a psychological standpoint, it is a complicated,