The Value of Multiple-Generation Cohorts for Studying Parenting and Child Development

Participants in longitudinal studies that followed children into adulthood now have children of their own, which has enabled researchers to establish multiple‐generation cohorts. In this article, I illustrate the benefits of multiple‐generation cohort studies for developmental researchers, including: (a) the impact of child and adolescent characteristics (i.e., preconception factors) on parenthood can be studied from a developmental perspective and without having to rely on retrospective reports, (b) intergenerational continuity and transmission can be examined for psychological, behavioral, and social development, and by comparing parent and offspring generations for the same developmental period, and (c) the interplay of genetic and environmental influences on parenting and child development can be disentangled. Even though multiple‐generation studies pose unique logistical and methodological challenges, such cohorts are indispensable for rigorous research into parenting and the origins of child development

What Explains Correlates of Peer Victimization? A Systematic Review of Mediating Factors

Being accepted by peers is central to health and wellbeing among adolescents whereas being the subject of peer/bullying-victimization can be perceived as significant interpersonal stress, resulting in compromised adjustment concurrently and long-term. Unfortunately, little is known about mechanisms that explain why peer victimization goes “under the skin”. This systematic review aims to summarize the research on mediating pathways. A total of 65 articles were selected that explicitly examined mediation of associations between peer victimization in adolescence and concurrent and later outcomes. Most studies were based on North American and European samples and focused on internalizing or school-related outcomes. Mediation appears to be more stable by emotional states and symptoms than self-perceptions and attributions but results vary by outcome. Limitations concern the cross-sectional design of most studies, geographic restriction, and widespread use of self-reports for assessments of exposure, mediator, and outcome

School Social Relations and Child Development:Gene-Environment Interplay

In the past, most theoretical perspectives on human development have focused on environmental causes of differences between children, but the consensus today is that genetic and environmental factors interact and reciprocally influence each other through gene-environment interplay. Most of the prior research has focused on genetic factors working together with family-related factors (e.g., socioeconomic status, parenting) or stressful life events and experiences (e.g., maltreatment) to explain differences in developmental outcomes. However, children spend many hours in educational settings interacting with peers and teachers who also can influence developmental adjustment and well-being. This chapter summarizes current knowledge about gene-and-school environment interplay among primary school-aged children through 12 years old (the average age that they transition to middle school), documenting relationship-based (i.e., teacher-child relationship, school friendships, peer acceptance and rejection, victimization) and context-based (e.g., school policies, classroom norms) factors as they pertain to child externalizing and internalizing symptoms. After describing gene-environment interplay mechanisms and genetic research methods, we present empirical examples of gene-and-school environment interplay that contributes to variation in child maladjustment. We conclude with a discussion of implications for theory, practice, and future directions in genetically informed research on the association between social relations in school and child development.</p

Internalizing and externalizing correlates of parental overprotection as measured by the EMBU:A systematic review and meta-analysis

Aspects of parenting including overprotection explain individual differences in child adjustment. This review and meta-analysis summarizes studies on parental overprotection and internalizing and externalizing problems. To ensure that findings could be compared as systematically as possible, the focus was on studies that used the overprotection scale of the Egna Minnen Beträffande Uppfostran (“Memories of my Parents’ Upbringing”) (EMBU) questionnaire, a popular instrument to measure parental overprotection. In total, we extracted 176 effects from 29 studies. A modified version of the Newcastle-Ottawa Scale was used to perform quality assessments for the included studies. Parental overprotection was associated positively with offspring internalizing and externalizing problems, with overall estimates ranging from r =.14 to.18. Moderator analyses suggested that effects of maternal were larger than effects of paternal overprotection. Other factors that moderated the strength of the association between overprotection and maladjustment included whether outcomes were self-reported or parent-reported, the design was cross-sectional or longitudinal, and publication year. Cultural context, age at exposure, and child sex did not explain differences between effect sizes. Most findings were based on cross-sectional studies and therefore do not constitute proof of causal relations. Many studies were of less-than-satisfactory quality regarding representativeness of the sample, descriptions of the data collection, and statistical analyses. There is a clear need for well-powered longitudinal studies to strengthen inferences about associations between parental overprotection and internalizing and externalizing problems

Prevalence of overweight among Dutch primary school children living in JOGG and non-JOGG areas

BACKGROUND: One of the most influential integrated approaches towards reducing childhood obesity is EPODE, a program that has been translated to over 20 different countries worldwide. AIM: The goal of this study was to explore how JOGG–the Dutch EPODE adaptation–might reduce overweight prevalence among children. METHODS: To compare whether overweight prevalence was different in JOGG areas vs. non-JOGG areas, in long-term JOGG areas vs. short-term JOGG areas, and in low SES JOGG areas vs. middle/high SES JOGG areas, secondary anthropometric and personal data of 209,565 Dutch children were mapped onto publicly available JOGG data. RESULTS: Findings showed that overweight prevalence decreased from 25.17% to 16.08% in JOGG-areas, and from 32.31% to 18.43% in long-term JOGG areas. However, when taking into account SES, the decrease in prevalence was mainly visible in low SES long-term JOGG areas. CONCLUSION: JOGG appeared to be successful in targeting areas where overweight was most prevalent. Low SES areas that had implemented JOGG for a longer period of time, i.e., six years, appeared to be successful in decreasing overweight prevalence

The Interplay Between Peer Rejection and Acceptance in Preadolescence and Early Adolescence, Serotonin Transporter Gene, and Antisocial Behavior in Late Adolescence:The TRAILS Study

Gene-environment studies on adolescents' peer contexts are important for understanding the interplay between biological and social antecedents of adolescent psychopathology. To this end, this study examined the roles of serotonin transporter (5-HTTLPR) and preadolescent and early adolescent peer rejection and acceptance, as well as the interaction between genotype and environment as predictors of antisocial behavior. Longitudinal data from TRAILS (TRacking Adolescents' Individual Lives Survey), a Dutch cohort study into adolescent development that includes peer reports of rejection and acceptance assessed at 11.1 and 13.6 years and self-reported antisocial behavior at 19.1 years was used. The interaction between 5-HTTLPR and preadolescent peer rejection predicted antisocial behavior with carriers of the 5-HTTLPR short-short variant most strongly affected. No main or interaction effects were found for early adolescent rejection or interactions involving peer acceptance. Our results extend the gene-environment interaction literature by focusing on peer relationship experiences.</p

Reward Responsiveness, Optimism, and Social and Mental Functioning in Children Aged 6-7:Protocol of a Cross-Sectional Pilot Study

Background: There is evidence that reward responsiveness and optimism are associated with mental and social functioning in adolescence and adulthood, but it is unknown if this is also the case for young children. Part of the reason for this gap in the literature is that the instruments that are used to assess reward responsiveness and optimism in adolescents and adults are usually not suitable for young children. Objective: Two behavioral tasks to assess reward learning, a questionnaire on reward responsiveness, and a questionnaire on optimism/pessimism will be tested on their feasibility and reliability in children aged 6-7. Depending on their feasibility and reliability, these instruments will also be used to investigate if reward responsiveness and optimism are associated with mental and social functioning in young children. Methods: For this cross-sectional pilot study, we adapted a number of tasks and questionnaires to the needs of 6-7-year-old children, by simplification of items, oral rather than written assessment, and reducing the number of conditions and items. We will approach teachers and, with their help, aim to include 70 children aged 6-7 to assess the feasibility and reliability of the tasks and questionnaires. Feasibility measures that will be reported are the proportion of children completing the task/questionnaire, the proportion of children that were able to explain the instructions in their own words to the researcher, and the proportion of children that correctly answered the control questions. The reliability of the scales will be assessed by computing Cronbach α and item-total score correlations and the reliability of the tasks by correlations between different consecutive blocks of trials. Ethics approval was obtained from the Ethics Committee of the Department of Pedagogy and Educational Sciences. Results: Data collection was originally planned in March and April 2020, but has been postponed due to Corona virus regulations. We expect to collect the data in the first half of 2021. The findings will be disseminated in preprints and peer-reviewed publications. Conclusions: The development of feasible and reliable instruments for assessing reward responsiveness and optimism in young children is expected to benefit future research on underlying mechanisms of mental and social functioning in young children. If the instruments assessed in this study are usable with young children, it would be particularly interesting to include them in cohort studies because this would enable investigating not only concurrent associations, but also prospective associations between reward responsiveness and optimism early in life and mental and social functioning later in life. If, as we hypothesize, reward responsiveness and optimism are not only associated with (prospective) mental and social functioning in adults and adolescents but also in young children, this could provide a way of identifying vulnerable children already at an early stage

Caught in a vicious cycle? Explaining bidirectional spillover between parent-child relationships and peer victimization

Relationships with parents and peers are crucial for children's socialization, but how parent-child and peer relationships mutually affect each other is not well understood. Guided by spillover theory, we zoomed in on the bidirectional interplay between parental rejection and warmth on the one hand and peer victimization on the other, and examined whether children's maladjustment symptoms mediated hypothesized cross-domain spillover effects. Data stem from five waves of the longitudinal KiVa study among 9,770 children (50% boys; mean age = 9.16, standard deviation = 1.29). Results from random intercept cross-lagged panel models showed that higher parental rejection and lower parental warmth predicted increases in peer victimization and vice versa across waves, thus supporting the bidirectional model. Moreover, spillover from parent-child rejection and warmth to peer victimization was partially driven by children's depressive symptoms and bullying perpetration. Vice versa, spillover from peer victimization to parent-child rejection and warmth was partially driven by children's social anxiety, depressive symptoms, conduct problems, and bullying perpetration. Thus, children might get caught in persistent problems in two important social domains, and these two domains influence each other through children's maladjustment. Family and school interventions should be integrated to prevent a downwards spiral

Intergenerational Transmission of Peer Aggression

It is plausible that peer aggression—like general forms of aggression—is transmitted from one generation to the next. As such, parental behavior in childhood and adolescence may be associated with offspring aggressive behavior against peers. This study used 1970 British Cohort Study data to test intergenerational transmission of peer aggression. The baseline sample consisted of 13,135 participants. At the first assessment that was used in this study, participants were on average 4.95 years old (SD = 0.79; 48.20% female). At the last assessment, participants were on average 33.88 years old (SD = 0.36; 52.1% female). Models were computed for early and middle childhood, and adolescence. Significant associations between parents’ and offspring peer aggression were found in most models – especially when correlating aggression in similar developmental periods for parents and children. Other transmission mechanisms such as genetic transmission may be relevant and should be taken into account in future studies