Moderators of Role-Confusion in Depressed Mothers and Their Children in a Low-Income Minority Sample

Introduction: Role-Confusion is an emerging construct in the study of parent-child relationships and is observed in relationships where parents in some way abdicate typical aspects of the parental role. (Example: parent may rely on child for emotional comfort when adult support is not sufficient, or parent may seek to act like a child’s best friend). Studies suggest that consistent role-confusion in parent-child relationships may adversely affect child socio-emotional development and relate to higher risk for development of psychopathology. Parental depression places parents at substantially greater risk for engaging in role-confused behavior, and some studies indicate that rates of role-confusion may be higher in samples of families with high levels of contextual stress (e.g. poverty, various forms of social marginalization). Few studies have examined resilience factors in parents at high risk for role-confused parenting (e.g. depressed parents) or in children whose families exhibit consistently high levels of role-confusion. The current study will examine patterns of role-confusion and resilience in families and test the following hypotheses: 1) Higher maternal depression will relate to higher parental role-confusion, but higher parental social supports and emotional intelligence will moderate this relationship. 2) Higher parental role-confusion will relate to higher levels of child socioemotional and behavioral problems, but higher levels of child emotion knowledge will moderate these relationships.

Methods: Participants for this study will include 80 parent-child dyads recruited from Philadelphia area pre-schools. The majority of the sample will be African American parent-child dyads who fall below federal poverty guidelines and are eligible for participation in Head Start. Measures will include the Adult-Adolescent Parenting Inventory, The Parent Development Interview, MOS Social Support Survey, and Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test, Emotions Matching Task, and the Child Behavior Checklist.

Results/Data Analytic Plan: To test both hypotheses we will run correlation analyses and hierarchical linear regressions.

Conclusions/Implications: Identifying correlates of tendencies to engage in role-confused behavior in a parenting role, as well as resilience factors in parents and children will add to existing literature on this emerging construct and potentially provide important information for the development of parenting prevention and intervention programs. The study results will expand our understanding of these constructs and patterns of role-confusion in parent-child relationships within families coping with high levels of contextual stress, including poverty, single parenthood, racism, and other forms of social marginalization.