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Childhood and Parenting
Written and researched by Bob Murray, PhD
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Parental Divorce Leads to Marital Discord in Offspring
March 11, 2002
Finally, a study that validates what most of us have already noticed: Satisfying and stable marriages appear to actually be increasingly rare. Researchers using data from the General Social Survey found that only about one third of marriages were both happy and intact after 16 years. Concern over the apparently dismal state of contemporary marriage has stimulated a good deal of research on the causes of marital dysfunction.
In trying to understand what causes marriages to deteriorate, some researchers have focussed on relationship development following marriage, whereas others have focussed on traits and relationship skills that individuals bring to the relationship. The assumption that some of the characteristics that individuals bring to marriage can be traced to the family of origin has led to a belief that marital discord and satisfaction are transmitted across generations -- that marital discord is a learned behavior.
A new study by researchers at Pennsylvania State University drew on a national longitudinal study of 297 parents and their married offspring. The study draws on interviews with a national sample of married individuals in 1980 (whose offspring averaged 13 years old) and their married offspring in 1997 (when the offspring averaged 30 years of age).
Although some researchers restrict the term marital quality to spouses' reports of satisfaction, the present researchers extended the term to include spouses' reports of a range of marital processes: happiness with the marriage, the amount of positive interaction, the frequency of arguments and violence, the number of perceived problems in the marriage, and thoughts or actions leading to divorce. This approach made it possible to cast a wide net in determining how parents' and children's marriages are linked.
According to Paul Amato, the lead researcher, "Our analysis revealed that parents' marital discord was significantly linked with offspring's marital harmony and marital discord. When parents reported more conflict, problems, and instability in their marriages in 1980, children reported less happiness, less interaction, more conflict, more problems, and greater instability in their marriages in 1997."
Amato and his colleagues also concluded that intergenerational marital discord was not the result of genetic factors. Further the effect of parental discord was the same for boys as for girls. "These results suggest that children (irrespective of gender) from high-discord families experience psychological distress in adulthood because they tend to have discordant marriages," concluded Amato.
Another interesting finding of the study was that negative aspects of the parents' marriage had more of an effect for offspring than were positive aspects of the parents' marriage.
The researchers asked what particular personality traits in parents lead to offspring's marital discord. They found the most discord when one or other (or both) parent was described as jealous, domineering, "gets angry easily," critical, moody, and "won't talk to the other." They found it did not appear to matter which parent exhibited the problem. In summary, although a range of marital problems predicted offspring's marital discord, the key items reflected traits associated with problematic interpersonal behaviors. It seems that a disruptive and unpleasant interpersonal style on the part of one or both parents lies at the core of the intergenerational transmission of marital discord.
The researchers also found that if parents marriages improved over time, their offspring's own marriages tended to show a similar improvement.
Summarizing, Amato states "Our study provides evidence consistent with an observational-learning perspective. This perspective assumes that children are exposed to parents' behavior, process and store this information, and replicate this behavior in their own marriages. "
We have been saying this for a long time and it's nice to have it reaffirmed by solid research. BM
Read more in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
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Abused Boys Have More Health Problems
February 25, 2002
The on-going saga of the cover-up of child sexual abuse in Anglican (i.e. Episcopal) schools in Australia and Canada and by Catholic priests in the United States was recently given a new twist when researchers from Swansea NHS Trust found boy victims of sexual abuse were three times more likely to suffer health problems.
They found that although both abused and non-abused boys experience similar problems, the length of time visiting the doctor went up significantly for the abuse victims. The researchers say the findings are essential for redressing the balance on the effect sexual abuse has on males.
The research team looked at the health records of 93 boys, six years after they had suffered sexual abuse by the same schoolteacher over a 10-year period. Most were aged between 8 and 10 at the time of the abuse and were subjected to various forms and degrees of abuse.
Six years on, their health records were compared with the same number of children from a neighboring primary school who had not suffered any abuse. The study found that the types of problems experienced by both sets of groups were the same and that the abused boys did not use the health services any more than the comparison group.
But there was a greater number of GP consultations for the same psychological problem or "unexplained illness" among the set of abused boys. The abused boys were almost twice as likely to need between two and four GP sessions as the other boys and needed between five and nine consultations for the same problem.
The length of recovery time was also longer for the abused boys, the study found. Some 75% of the boys who had not been sexually abused took one month or less to get better, whereas this only applied to half the abused boys. And there was a sizeable number of the abused boys who had problems lasting four months or more.
The report also predicts that those boys most affected by the abuse could then "go on to become victims of more persistent abuse." The study's authors say sexual abuse is under reported -- particularly among boys -- giving rise to the view that it does not happen very often or with any impact on their development.
Despite the controversy over abuse in church schools and choirs, most sexual abuse takes place in the home. A Washington university study carried out a few years ago found that the abuse of boys was nearly as high as that of girls. BM
Read more in Archives of Disease in Childhood
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In Terms of Behavior, Candy is Not So Sweet!
December 8, 2001
A head teacher who encouraged children to give up brightly-coloured sweets says it has transformed their behavior. Academic performance has also improved, according to Gordon Walker, of Tywardreath School in Cornwall, England.
But he says the government has ignored his concerns about the effects of food additives in sweets and other products, such as fizzy drinks.
Mr Walker banned food with additives from school lunches during a week in mid-November, and invited parents to carry on the experiment at home. Since then, he has given out fewer detentions and children have been calmer.
He said: "I have been a head teacher for 17 years and I have noticed a change in children over that time, in terms of behavior and concentration. There are other factors, such as social change, but I think food additives have a lot to do with it."
He said one well-known chocolate sweet had an almost instantaneous effect. "I have seen my two boys' behavior go within seconds of eating them. It's quite frightening. I had a phone call from a community policeman in Penzance who was convinced half the crimes committed by youngsters were caused by additives."
The offending additives' E-numbers on the school's blacklist are:
- E 102 Tartrazine
- E 104 quinoline yellow
- E 107 yellow 2G
- E 110 sunset yellow FCF
- E 120 cochineal
- E 122 carmoisine
- E 123 amaranth
- E 124 ponceau 4R
- E 127 erythrosine
- E 128 red 2G
- E 132 indigo carmine
- E 133 brilliant blue FCF
- E 150 caramel
- E 150 black PN
- E 154 brown FK
- E 155 brown HT
- E 210 benzoic acid
- E 211sodium benzoate
- E 220 sulphur dioxide
- E 250 sodium nitrite
- E 251 potassium nitrite
- E 320 butylated hydroxyanisole
- E 321 butylated hydroxytoluene
Mr Walker said both parents and children were enthusiastic after being given a list of E-numbers to avoid.
Some scientists have linked additives -- particularly tartrazine or E102 -- to hyperactivity in children and other problems. At present these additives are perfectly legal both in Europe and in the US.
This is worth more serious study. If ADD/ADHD is even partly caused by additives then the case for Ritalin and other powerful drugs is enormously reduced. BM
Read more in BBC News
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Mothers' Neglect Changes Infants' Brain Development
November 26, 2001
The research has so far only been done in rats, but the results are significant. Abnormal regulation of dopamine in the brain has been linked to drug abuse, depression and personality disorders -- conditions that are also associated with childhood neglect in humans.
Brake's team separated newborn rats from their mothers for three hours a day for the normal duration of rat maternal care -- seven days. Next, they scanned 30,000 genes to look for changes in expression in two brain areas: the Hippocampus, which is involved in memory and is often smaller in depressed people, and the prefrontal cortex, which is involved in motivation and anxiety.
"Clearly, if the dopamine system of the brain is compromised, and if this can be extrapolated to humans, it could lead to greater susceptibility for drug dependence and perhaps greater vulnerability to develop certain psychiatric illnesses," says researcher Wayne Brake of the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Previous animal work has shown that it is a lack of stimulation and interaction that causes behavioural problems in neglected offspring, rather than early stress, for example.
Bruce McKewen, an expert on maternal separation at Rockefeller University, says it is reasonable to suspect that the effects of deprivation on gene expression in humans will be similar to the observed effects in mice. He adds: "We now need to look at the brains of children using non-invasive imaging to show that their developmental trajectory is changed by deprivation. This hasn't been done yet."
They found that the expression of several genes that are involved in the creation of new connections between neurons changed. "This suggests that the brain is developing differently in these mice and that perhaps nerve cells are making their connections in a different manner," Brake says.
The team also found changes in the expression of genes involved in the development of the dopamine system. An overactive dopamine system is associated with schizophrenia, and reduced dopamine levels are found in patients with major depression.
Understanding the role of early maternal separation on gene expression is essential if attempts to reverse the effects of neglect are to be properly formulated, say researchers. But the key aim would be to prevent the brain changes by setting up programs to properly support new mothers, says Brake.
This study confirms a number of others, especially those done by primatologists, which show that a present, nurturing, mother is vital in the early stages of life. A mother suffering from antenatal depression, for example, will very likely pass that illness on to her infant. BM
Read more in the New Scientist online
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Revolt Against Ritalin
November 10, 2001
There has been a lot of news lately about parents clamouring for Ritalin and other speed-type drugs to shove down the throats of their ADHD-diagnosed kids (see Bob Murray's article "Running From Ritalin" for insights into ADHD drugs and diagnosis). However, a new University of Florida study has found that many parents actually are quite frightened of drug therapy.
ADHD experts increasingly are recommending stimulant medications as the "gold standard" treatment for curbing inattentiveness and hyperactive or impulsive behavior. But in focus groups organized by University of Florida psychiatrist Dr Regina Bussing, parents and other primary caregivers rarely mentioned prescription drugs when asked to name treatments that worked for their children.
Instead, parents spoke extensively about the bad reputation such medications have among their friends and relatives, and their fears that the drugs would do lasting harm to their children. "If you put him on it, he is going to be crazy the rest of his life, walking around like a zombie," one focus group participant said acquaintances had told her. Others said people had claimed the drugs would turn children into addicts.
With professional and lay attitudes heading down such different paths, physicians risk having their advice and prescriptions ignored if they don't ask families about reservations regarding treatment, said Bussing, whose research findings appear in the September/October issue of the Harvard Review of Psychiatry.
Bussing and her research collaborator, Faye A Gary, a distinguished service professor at UF's College of Nursing, held focus groups to better understand what parents face in deciding to seek help for their children with ADHD.
Twenty-five parents and primary caregivers were divided into four groups for two-hour discussions about suspected causes of ADHD, treatment, factors that influenced the decision to seek professional care for their children and obstacles to obtaining such care. Fifteen of the 25 children were taking prescription medicine for ADHD.
"We knew that compliance with medications is a problem area, so that was one area that we wanted to shed light on," said Bussing, who is affiliated with the Evelyn F and William L McKnight Brain Institute of UF. "A complex picture emerged. Throughout the sessions, we heard 38 positive comments about medications being helpful, but when we specifically asked them to name effective treatments, the drugs were mentioned just three times."
In contrast, home-care strategies, such as maintaining discipline and providing structured activities, and other options including counselling or assistance offered by school systems, were mentioned 34 times. Parents and caregivers commented 33 times on their own fears about medications and negative attitudes of people around them. Such attitudes may prevent some people from seeking care for their children, Bussing said.
"It seems that parents are getting their information and advice from friends, family members and magazines, whereas medical professionals get treatment recommendations from medical journals and practice guidelines formulated by experts in the field. Stimulant medications therefore don't look the same to these groups," said Bussing, who noted that some articles in lay publications sensationalize the subject of ADHD. "The articles can feed into parents' anxieties."
Reported in Uniscience
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Depressed Mothers Have TV Addicted Children
October 26, 2001
The researchers, who presented their findings last week (September) in Quebec at a conference of the North American Association for the Study of Obesity, said that in families they had studied, the children of obese mothers watched television on average half an hour more a day than the children over all, who watched for two hours a day. If the mothers were also depressed, the children watched about an hour more.
For doctors worried about preventing obesity in children, and prolonged television watching is often blamed, the message is to consider the health of the mother, said Dr Hillary Burdette, the lead researcher.
"We need to focus on mothers' wellbeing," said Dr Burdette, of the Children's Hospital Medical Center of Cincinnati. "As health professionals, when we tell moms to turn off the television and they don't follow our advice, we need to find out what's going on there."
The findings came from a study of 150 low-income women in Vermont who were surveyed about their height and weight, their mental health and the amount of television their children watched. On average, the mothers reported that their children watched two hours of television a day, although the researchers acknowledged that the amount could well be more.
Dr Burdette said it was also unclear whether the children were watching television on their own or simply seeing what their mothers were watching.
Read more in the New York Times
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Future Criminals Can Be Spotted Early
October 7, 2001
Research published in the British Journal of Psychiatry says that there is a strong association between behavior at age 3 years and adult criminality.
The research team, led by Jim Stevenson, PhD, Centre for Research into Psychological Development, Department of Psychology, University of Southampton, found that the presence of specific behavior problems in the pre-school period places the child at increased risk of being convicted of an adult offence.
They also found that the social circumstances of the family was not relevant in predicting which kids would grow up to be offenders. In other words poverty by itself doesn't lead to crime.
The team looked at the pre-school behavior patterns of 828 adult offenders and compared them to a similar sample group of non-offenders. Those who got into trouble with the law had a history of temper tantrums, soiling, inability to socialize, management difficulties and ADD-like activity levels.
Violent offenders tended to display more temper tantrums and management problems as children than non-violent offenders.
We have long maintained that a person was 'programmed' by the age of six and that this 'program' dictates future attitudes and behavioral patterns. The 'programming agents' are the child's relationship environment, particularly his or her parents. One of the things we do in the Uplift Program is point out ways in which children, and adults, can rid themselves of the more noxious parts of this programming. BM
Read more in the British Journal of Psychiatry
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Asthma Not Just About Allergies
October 7, 2001
Researchers have found that psychological factors may increase the likelihood that children whose genetic make-up makes them vulnerable to asthma will actually develop the condition.
They found that children whose parents struggled to come to terms with the responsibilities of looking after a child were more than twice as likely to develop asthma. Parenting difficulties included maternal depression, relationship conflicts and a lack of social support.
Asthma is an allergic condition that causes laboured breathing and can be life-threatening. It is the most common chronic illness of childhood, and the number of cases has risen sharply over the past decade. Researchers from the National Jewish Medical and Research Center, Mayo Clinic and Colorado Allergy and Asthma Centers studied genetically at-risk children between the ages of six and eight.
They focused on the impact of parenting during the child's first three weeks of life. Lead researcher Dr Mary Klinnert said: "Asthma is a complex disease with many contributing factors. Many of the children in our study with well-adjusted, caring, effective parents still developed asthma. But our results do indicate that the psychological environment of the child may play a role in the development of asthma."
Dr David Mrazek, chair of the Mayo Clinic's Department of Psychiatry and Psychology, said that the research emphasized just how powerful human emotions can be.
He was quoted in BBC News: "This study shows that emotional distress experienced early in life can have long-term health consequences. It's important not to blame parents, but to support them in doing their best to provide a nurturing environment." Dr Mrazek said that it was possible that the stress associated with parental problems caused chemical changes in the body that had an effect on the function of genes thought to be linked to the development of asthma.
That levels of parenting skills can have this effect is hardly surprising. Other studies have shown that the experiences of children, even in the first hours of life, can have serious implications for their ability to socialize, or example. There is very little training of potential parents and the stresses, particularly economic, on young couples is enormous. BM
Read more in BBC News
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Teachers Suffer Increased Disruption, Bullying
September 21, 2001
A survey carried out by the University of Warwick has found that two out of three teachers in the UK have lessons disrupted every week by badly-behaved pupils.
Researchers questioned 2,500 teachers across England and Wales and found that the picture was much the same in rural and urban areas. The survey suggested that the problem of violent and disruptive pupils was not limited to secondary schools, and that some of the culprits are as
young as three.
Among the findings were that:
- 69% of teachers say lessons disrupted weekly
- 80% say behaviour has deteriorated
- 60% hear bad language every week
- 32% say they have been bullied by a child
- 43% see children threatening other children every week
Dr Sean Neil, who conducted the survey, said he had been most struck by how common disrupted lessons had become. "Teachers said they experienced low-level disruption such as answering back and disobedience every day or every week. It meant they could not give the lesson they had planned and they felt they could not do their job properly."
Dr Neil said teachers told him pupils seemed to know there was no effective sanction against them, that all the teachers could do was tell them off.
The National Union of Teachers' Doug McAvoy said it was not fair that a few disruptive pupils were damaging the education of the majority. "Teachers and pupils should not be expected to accept continuation of such behaviour," he said. "They have a right to teach and to learn without constant disruption and threats or actual violence."
In particular, the union wants the guidelines on when pupils can be expelled to be widened, to give more examples of what behaviour will not be tolerated.
The real message here is the same one we have been giving in relation to ADD/ADHD (read more about the diagnosis and prevalence of Attention Defficit Disorders in our article
"Running From Ritalin") and that is that children in our society are too pressured to learn and have too little opportunity to play in natural surroundings (see our health news story
"Have Our Children Forgotten How to Play?"). Further, families under stress from work or dysfunctional relationships are going to produce depressed or disruptive children (see news stories
"Parents Fighting Leads to Troubled Kids" and
"Daycare Leads to Agression"). BM
Read more in BBC News
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About the Author
Dr Bob Murray is a widely published psychologist and expert on emotional health and optimal relationships. Together with his wife and long-term collaborator Alicia Fortinberry, he is founder of the highly successful Uplift Program, and author of Raising an Optimistic Child (McGraw-Hill, 2006) and Creating Optimism (McGraw-Hill, 2004).
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