McCoy Dana Charles, Raver C Cybele
Center on the Developing Child, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA.
Department of Applied Psychology, New York University, New York, NY, USA.
J Child Poverty. 2014;20(2):131-152. doi: 10.1080/10796126.2014.976185. Epub 2014 Nov 10.
Past research suggests that poverty may negatively influence children's psychological and behavioral health by increasing their exposure to chaotic living conditions in the household. The present study provides a descriptive 'snapshot' of instability in low-income households, and examines the associations between exposure to major destabilizing events over the course of a year and three domains of poor urban children's self-regulation. Descriptive analyses suggest that although caregivers from unstable households report higher average levels of health problems and depression, they also have greater assets/savings, are more educated, and are less likely to be immigrants than caregivers from stable households. Results of propensity score-matched regression analyses reveal that high levels of household instability are significantly and negatively associated with preschoolers' effortful control and global attention/impulsivity control, but not with their executive function. Children from mildly unstable homes (i.e., those who had experienced a single destabilizing event in the past year) showed no significant differences in any domain of self-regulation relative to their peers from stable households, suggesting a dose-response relationship between the number of destabilizing events experienced by children and their outcomes. Implications for theories of poverty-related adversity, stress, and parenting are discussed in addition to future directions for research.
过去的研究表明，贫困可能会通过增加儿童接触家庭混乱生活条件的机会，对其心理和行为健康产生负面影响。本研究提供了低收入家庭不稳定状况的描述性“快照”，并考察了一年内经历的重大不稳定事件与城市贫困儿童自我调节的三个领域之间的关联。描述性分析表明，尽管来自不稳定家庭的照料者报告的健康问题和抑郁平均水平较高，但他们也拥有更多资产/储蓄，受教育程度更高，并且与来自稳定家庭的照料者相比，他们不太可能是移民。倾向得分匹配回归分析结果显示，家庭高度不稳定与学龄前儿童的努力控制以及整体注意力/冲动控制显著负相关，但与他们的执行功能无关。来自轻度不稳定家庭（即过去一年中经历过一次不稳定事件的家庭）的儿童在自我调节的任何领域与来自稳定家庭的同龄人相比均无显著差异，这表明儿童经历的不稳定事件数量与其结果之间存在剂量反应关系。除了研究的未来方向外，还讨论了与贫困相关的逆境、压力和养育理论的意义。
