Cascading Pathways: Explaining the Long-Term Effects of the New Beginnings Program

Theoretically, prevention programs modify social, environmental, and individual risk and protective factors, as well as competencies and problems, and these changes affect development through positive cascading effects. The current study tested a cascading pathway model in a randomized trial of a program for divorced families, the New Beginnings Program (NBP). Two hundred and forty children and their primary residential mothers were randomly assigned to a mother-only program, concurrent mother-plus-child program, or literature control condition.  The mother program was designed to change the following empirically-supported correlates of children’s post-divorce mental health: maternal warmth, ef­fective discipline, children’s exposure to inter-parental con­flict, and father-child contact.  The child program was designed to change active and avoidant coping, threat appraisals of divorce stressors, and moth­er-child relationship quality. Assessments occurred at pre-test, posttest, and 3-month, 6-month (childhood), 6-year (adolescence) and 15-year (emerging adulthood) follow-ups. Because there were very few significant main or interactive differences in comparisons of outcomes in the mother-only program versus mother-plus-child program at post-test and the follow-ups, these two conditions were combined. At the 15-year follow-up, 89.6% of the families randomly assigned to condition participated and attrition was not differential across condition.

Multiple-path mediation models using structure equation modeling were conducted to test the hypothesis that the intervention-induced changes on maternal warmth at post-test, and externalizing and internalizing problems in childhood led to lower substance use, less risky sexual behaviors, fewer mental health problems, and higher competencies in adolescence, which in turn had effects on similar adaptive outcomes in emerging adulthood.  The results supported several cascading pathways. The NBP had a positive effect on parental warmth that was related to subsequent decreases in child internalizing and externalizing problems.  Decreased childhood internalizing problems led not only to lower internalizing symptoms, but also to higher self-esteem and coping efficacy in adolescence. Similarly, decreased childhood externalizing problems led to lower externalizing symptoms and better school performance in adolescence. Lower internalizing and externalizing symptoms in adolescence related to lower internalizing, externalizing, and substance use diagnoses, as well as fewer internalizing and externalizing problems in emerging adulthood.  In addition, higher self-esteem, coping efficacy, and school performance in adolescence led to lower internalizing, externalizing, and substance use problems in emerging adulthood.