The Impact of Food Allergy on Parenting and Autonomy in Young Children

描述(由申请人提供)：自主性和社交技能的重要变化发生在儿童早期，通过儿童日益增长的独立性和与环境的互动。父母为幼儿提供独立活动的机会，帮助他们学习新的技能，培养他们对独立解决问题和调节情绪的能力的信心，从而在促进自主性发展方面发挥关键作用。过度保护性、控制性或限制性的养育方式会干扰自主性发展。焦虑和/或认为自己的孩子脆弱的父母面临着更具保护性的养育方式的风险。食物过敏是一种非常常见的、可能危及生命的疾病，通常在生命的头两年被诊断出来。为了防止接触到可能导致危及生命的过敏反应的食物过敏原，父母必须对孩子吃的一切保持警惕，因此往往严格限制孩子在家外的活动。食物过敏还增加了父母焦虑的可能性，因为孩子在家外接触过敏原的不可预测性和不可控制性，以及这种接触的潜在灾难性后果。研究表明，父母焦虑的增加与更具控制力和侵入性的育儿方式有关。此外，由于食物过敏儿童日常生活的许多方面都必须监测和控制，控制和侵入性的父母教育可能会主导父母与孩子互动的方式，并可能干扰自主发展所需的独立探索。因此，食物过敏为研究幼儿生活中与发育相关的各方面自然发生的干扰提供了机会--暴露在新环境中、与同龄人交往的机会、父母的焦虑以及促进自主的育儿做法。通过问卷调查、结构化访谈和对亲子互动的结构化观察，这项研究将60名3至5岁的食物过敏儿童及其母亲与健康同龄人及其母亲进行了比较，以测试1)食物过敏儿童及其家人是否比健康儿童的母亲更限制日常活动，更少与同龄人互动，并表现出更少的自主性；2)食物过敏儿童的母亲在与食物无关的互动中是否报告更多的焦虑，并表现出更多的保护性父母态度和行为。从理论上考察学龄前儿童的父母焦虑、保护性父母教养方式和儿童自主性之间的相关关系。无论儿童的疾病状况如何，父母的焦虑预计都与保护性父母养育和儿童自主性有关，保护性父母养育在焦虑和儿童自主性之间的关系中起到调节作用。预计结果将确定研究不足和不断增长的人口、患有食物过敏的儿童中可能存在的发育风险领域，并加强对父母养育对儿童总体发展影响的了解。通过研究受限制的社会活动和过度保护父母养育的风险人群，将更好地理解涉及自主性发展和父母过度保护的心理过程。最终，这一结果将对为患有食物过敏和其他健康状况的儿童的父母制定干预计划产生影响，这些儿童可能面临负面心理社会后果的风险。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Important changes in autonomy and social skills take place in early childhood through the child's increasing independence and interaction with the environment. Parents play a crucial role in facilitating autonomy development by providing young children opportunities for independent activities and by helping them learn new skills and develop confidence in their ability to independently solve problems and regulate their emotions. Overly protective, controlling, or restrictive parenting interferes with autonomy development. Parents who are anxious and/or perceive their child to be vulnerable are at risk for more protective parenting. Food allergy is a very common, potentially life-threatening disease that is typically diagnosed in the first two years of life. In order to prevent exposure to food allergens that could cause a life-threatening allergic reaction, parents must be vigilant about everything that their child eats and as a result, often severely restrict the child's activities outside the home. Food allergy also increases the likelihood of parental anxiety because of the unpredictability and uncontrollability of the child's exposure to allergens outside the home and the potential catastrophic consequences of such exposure. Elevated parental anxiety has been shown to be associated with more controlling and intrusive parenting. Moreover, because so many aspects of the food allergic child's daily life must be monitored and controlled, controlling and intrusive parenting may come to predominate the ways in which parents interact with their children and possibly interfere with the independent exploration necessary for autonomy development. Thus, food allergy presents an opportunity to study naturally-occurring disruptions in developmentally relevant aspects of the lives of young children -- exposure to new environments, opportunities to socialize with peers, parental anxiety, and autonomy-promoting parenting practices. Using questionnaires, structured interviews, and structured observations of parent-child interactions, the proposed study compares 60, 3- to 5-year-old children with food allergy and their mothers with a comparison sample of healthy peers and their mothers in order to test 1) whether children with food allergy and their families have more restricted daily activities outside the home, fewer interactions with peers, and demonstrate less autonomy than healthy children; and 2) whether mothers of food allergic children report greater anxiety and show more protective parenting attitudes and behaviors during interactions that are unrelated to food than mothers of healthy children. Theoretically relevant relations among parental anxiety, protective parenting, and child autonomy in preschool aged children will be examined. Regardless of the child's illness status, parental anxiety is expected to be related to protective parenting and to child autonomy, with protective parenting mediating the relation between anxiety and child autonomy. The results are expected to identify areas of possible developmental risk in an understudied and growing population, children with food allergy as well as enhance understanding of parenting influences on child development in general. By studying a population at risk for restricted social activities and for the development of overprotective parenting, the psychological processes involved in autonomy development and in parental overprotection will be better understood. Ultimately, the results have implications for the development of intervention programs for parents of children with food allergy and other health conditions who may be at risk for negative psychosocial outcomes.