Does Maternal Supervision Mediate the Impact of Income Source on Behavioral Adjustment in Children From Persistently Poor Families?

• NCJ Number: 217419
• Journal: Journal of Early Adolescence Volume: 27 Issue: 1 Dated: February 2007 Pages: 40-66
• Author(s): Mirella De Civita; Linda S. Pagani; Frank Vitaro; Richard E. Tremblay
• Date Published: February 2007
• Length: 27 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Report (Study/Research)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This study explored the influence of income source within the context of persistent poverty on the disruptive classroom behavior of children.

Abstract

Results indicated that the children in welfare-dependent families were 2.23 points higher on the disruptive scale compared with children in never-poor families. This finding was not explained by maternal supervision, maternal characteristics, family structure, or early childhood disruptiveness, suggesting a direct relationship between welfare dependence and disruptive child behavior. Other findings revealed that higher levels of maternal supervision were related to a decrease in their children’s disruptive behavior and that children living in welfare-dependent families displayed a significant increase in disruptive behaviors between ages 6 and 12, which stood in contrast to the behaviors of their working-poor and work-and-welfare counterparts. The findings lend support to welfare-to-work policies. Data were drawn from the Quebec Longitudinal Study, which focused on parents’ and teachers’ assessments of children’s behavior among a sample of 6,397 randomly selected children enrolled in kindergarten in all 11 administrative regions of the Canadian province of Quebec. The current analysis focused on the parent and teacher assessments of 1,112 children who were followed from kindergarten through sixth grade. Teachers completed measures of children’s behavior, including prosocial and antisocial behaviors, while mothers completed measures of children’s behavior, sociodemographic information, family economic circumstances, income source, and maternal supervision characteristics. The analysis classified the families into one of five economic groups: persistently-poor, never-poor, welfare-only, work-only, and work-and-welfare. Data analysis involved the calculation of Spearman’s correlation coefficients and hierarchical regression models. Future research should focus on the role of neighborhood influences on parents’ motivation for supervising their children. Tables, figures, appendix, references