Poverty, Maternal Depression, Family Status and Children's Cognitive and Behavioural Development in Early Childhood: A Longitudinal Study
Poverty, Maternal Depression, Family Status and Children's Cognitive and Behavioural Development in Early Childhood: A Longitudinal Study
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DOI：
10.1017/s0047279409003250
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发表时间：
2009-10-01
影响因子：
2
通讯作者：
Mensah, Fiona K.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Kiernan, Kathleen E.;Mensah, Fiona K.
改善儿童生活是英国政策议程上的重要议题。在这项针对最近出生的英国儿童的研究中，我们研究了父母资源的三个方面——收入、母亲的心理健康和家庭状况——在儿童早期如何促进或损害孩子的认知和行为发展。除了研究父母资源的这三个方面如何分别或共同影响儿童的福祉外，我们还探讨了持续的贫困或持续的母亲抑郁是否比周期性的贫困和抑郁对儿童当前的福祉更有害。我们发现贫困与幼儿的智力和行为发展之间有很强的联系，而持续的贫困对儿童的认知发展尤为重要。母亲抑郁（净其他因素）与认知发展的关系较弱，但与孩子是否表现出行为问题密切相关，持续的抑郁放大了这种情况。除去其他因素（最明显的是贫穷），家庭地位与儿童的发展只有微弱的联系。
Improving children's lives is high on the UK policy agenda. In this study for a recent birth cohort of UK children we examine how three aspects of parental resources - income, mother's mental well-being and family status - in early childhood enhance or compromise their children's cognitive and behavioural development. As well as examining how these three aspects of parental resources separately and jointly affect children's well-being, we also enquire whether persistent poverty or persistent maternal depression are more deleterious for children's current well-being than periodic episodes of poverty and depression. We find strong associations between poverty and young children's intellectual and behavioural development, and persistent poverty was found to be particularly important in relation to children's cognitive development. Maternal depression (net of other factors) was more weakly related to cognitive development but strongly related to whether children were exhibiting behaviour problems, and persistent depression amplified the situation. Family status, net of other factors (most noticeably poverty), was only weakly associated with children's development.