Parenting in the Context of Childhood Trauma: Self-Efficacy as a Mediator between Attributions and Parenting Competence

Given the well documented relationship between childhood trauma and the regulation of stress and emotion, it is likely that childhood trauma also will have important implications for parenting. As a result, the current study aimed to understand the relationships among mothers’ attributions, self-efficacy, and parenting competence within the context of childhood trauma experiences. In particular, mothers’ self-efficacy was examined as a mediator in the relationship between attributions and parenting competence. The sample was divided into low and high trauma subsamples. Mediation analyses indicated that, for mothers in the low childhood trauma subsample, the model was not supported. In contrast, among mothers in the high childhood trauma subsample, the model was supported. Additionally, hierarchical regression analyses revealed that self-efficacy was a strong unique predictor for young children’s internalizing and externalizing problems in mothers from the low childhood trauma subsample. In contrast, the examined variables worked more collectively in the prediction of young children’s internalizing and externalizing problems for mothers in the high childhood trauma subsample. These findings suggested that mothers’ understanding of their young children’s problems and their own parenting were related differently when the context of childhood trauma experiences was considered and may be important to target in parenting interventions

The Role of Nucleosomes in Epigenetic Gene Regulation

Chromatin is a dynamic and highly organised structure that plays a role in all aspects of chromatin biology and controls access to DNA. The basic repeating unit of chromatin is the nucleosome, an octamer of histone proteins wrapped around twice with DNA. Transcriptional gene regulation is largely controlled by the epigenetic regulation of the nucleosome, both through the position of the nucleosome in the DNA and chemical modifications to the histone proteins within the nucleosome core. In this chapter, we discuss the role of the nucleosome in controlling gene regulation at promoters, enhancers and in gene bodies. We also discuss the role of bivalent chromatin and asymmetric nucleosomes at these elements. While the focus of this chapter is on transcriptional regulation, many of the concepts also extend to other aspects of chromatin biology including DNA repair and replication