RELATIONSHIPS THAT PROTECT: LINKAGES AMONG TEENAGE PARENTS' INTERPERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS, PARENTING BEHAVIORS, AND THEIR CHILDREN'S MENTAL HEALTH

项目摘要：研究表明，在怀孕前后与孩子的母亲保持支持性夫妻关系的父亲更有可能继续与孩子接触，与家庭的关系也更牢固(Pinzon&Jones，2012)；然而，关于青少年父母的夫妇或共同养育关系在孩子早期发育或父母过渡到青春期的过程中的发展，人们知之甚少，因为此时大脑发育特别容易接受干预。本论文将首次考察青少年父母的支持性夫妻关系和共同育儿关系在为人父母的前九年中的发展，这些关系是如何与母亲的养育行为和孩子的心理健康联系在一起的，以及母亲的居住环境是否会缓和这些影响。潜在成长模型将被用来确定时间点、关系和居住环境，这些对青少年母亲响应性育儿行为的发展和孩子的心理健康至关重要。这篇论文的见解将有助于为健康的婚姻和家庭支持计划提供信息，这些计划希望为青少年夫妇实施创新的计划组成部分，并为复杂的家庭实施招募战略。将从脆弱家庭和儿童福祉(FFCW)数据库中提取19岁或19岁以下母亲所生儿童的子样本。只有与母亲同住并在基线和另一个时间点从生父那里报告了数据的孩子才会被保留。

Project Abstract: Research suggests that fathers who maintain supportive couple relationships with their children’s mothers before and after their pregnancy have a greater likelihood of continued engagement with their children, and stronger relationships with their families (Pinzon & Jones, 2012); however, little is known about the development of teenage parents’ couple or co-parenting relationships across children’s early development or parents’ transition to young adulthood, when developing brains are especially receptive to intervention. This dissertation will be the first to examine the development of teenage parents’ supportive couple and co-parenting relationships across the first nine years of parenthood, how these relationships link to maternal parenting behaviors and children’s mental health, and whether maternal residential contexts moderate these effects. Latent growth modeling will be used to identify timepoints, relationships, and residential contexts that are critical to the development of teenage mothers’ responsive parenting behaviors and their children’s mental health. Insights from this dissertation will help to inform healthy marriage and family support programs looking to implement innovative program components for teenage couples and recruitment strategies for complex families. A subsample of children who were born to mothers nineteen years old or younger will be extracted from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing (FFCW) database. Only children who reside with their mothers and have data reported from biological fathers at baseline and one other timepoint will be maintained.