Yunqi He

More than one in three US parents use corporal punishment to discipline their children. The objective of this study is to add to a greater understanding of factors associated with self‐reported corporal punishment, based on two survey items: one that asked about use of spanking and one that asked about hitting out of anger. The second objective was to examine the longitudinal relationship between parents' self‐reported use of spanking at age 35 and their self‐reports of hitting out of anger 5 years later. To accomplish these objectives, national US Monitoring the Future Panel Study data were used as follows. Objective 1: data collected in 1993–2020 from parents age 35 with child(ren) ages 2–12 at home. Objective 2: data collected in 1998–2020 from parents age 40 with child(ren) ages 7–17 at home. We conducted multinomial logistic regression to accomplish the objectives. Most factors significantly associated with increased odds of reporting spanking at age 35 differed from the factors associated with increased odds of reporting hitting out of anger at age 35. Reporting spanking at age 35 was associated with greater odds of reporting hitting out of anger at age 40 (aOR = 2.10, 95% CI: 1.71, 2.58). Depressive symptoms (aOR = 1.24, 95% CI: 1.09, 1.40) and disordered alcohol use (aOR = 1.55, 95% CI: 1.14, 2.11) were associated with greater odds of reporting hitting out of anger. Future research should continue to examine whether different types of corporal punishment have different determinants, whether and in what ways corporal punishment may escalate over time, and whether measurement error may impact this research.

Adolescents involved in the child welfare system face disproportionate mental health risks, yet our understanding of how coping strategies function within this population remains limited. This cross-sectional study examined how various coping strategies relate to mental health functioning among 245 adolescents with child welfare involvement and whether these relationships were moderated by adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). Using a modified version of the Children’s Coping Strategies Checklist and the Trauma Symptom Checklist for Children, hierarchical regression analyses revealed both direct associations and significant moderation effects. Direct effects showed that positive cognitive restructuring was associated with lower anxiety, depression, and posttraumatic stress symptoms, and problem-focused coping was related to fewer anger symptoms. Additionally, avoidance and distraction coping were associated with higher symptoms across multiple mental health concerns. However, simple slopes analyses revealed that ACEs altered these associations. Problem-focused coping showed negative associations with anger, dissociation, and sexual concerns at high ACE levels but not at mean or low ACE levels, and avoidance coping was positively associated with anxiety and depression at high and mean ACEs levels but not at low ACE level. Two strategies typically associated with fewer mental health problems showed a different pattern at high ACE levels (while showing no association at mean or low ACE levels): support-seeking was associated with increased anger symptoms and cognitive restructuring with increased sexual concerns. These findings highlight the context-dependent nature of coping and mental health associations and underscore the need for trauma-informed interventions that consider both adversity exposure and the development of coping skills tailored to adversity levels and available resources.

Mental health problems are increasing among U.S. adolescents. Numerous studies have linked adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) to these growing concerns. Studies in this rapidly expanding field are calling for the inclusion of contextually and developmentally relevant ACEs, such as discrimination and bullying, alongside conventional ACEs, such as maltreatment. The current study assesses the association between an expanded set of ACEs and mental health functioning among adolescents with child welfare involvement. Participants included 245 racially/ethnically diverse youth (ages 12-15; 60.5% female) and their parents/caregivers. Multi-informant measures of ACEs and adolescent functioning (e.g., internalizing behaviors, dissociative symptoms, social problems) were used. Based on extant literature, 21 candidate ACEs were selected for possible inclusion in an expanded ACE index. Fourteen ACEs were positively associated with at least one mental health variable and included in the index: physical abuse, sexual abuse, physical neglect, witnessing domestic violence, witnessing community violence, termination of parental rights, number of caregiver transitions, number of school changes, peer emotional bullying, peer physical bullying, cyberbullying, physical violence due to discrimination, emotional/relational dating violence, and sexual/physical dating violence. The resulting index was positively associated with all outcome variables. Subgroup analyses examined the association between ACEs and mental health functioning within different sociodemographic groups, finding relatively comparable effects. These results underscore the need to consider ACEs specific to adolescence and population/context. Findings also suggest that some ACEs - although likely still impactful in other ways-may be less influential for adolescent mental health functioning among youth with child welfare involvement.

Attachment security has been linked to healthy socioemotional development, but less is known about how secure attachment in infancy relates to emotional functioning in middle childhood, particularly across multiple contexts. The present study examined associations between secure attachment in infancy and children's context-dependent emotion expression during a parent-child interaction at age 9 (N = 78) among families with Child Protective Services involvement (i.e., children at risk for emotion dysregulation). The results indicated that children classified as securely attached in infancy exhibited less task-incongruent affect (i.e., less positive affect during a distressing discussion, less negative affect during a positive discussion) and a greater decrease in negative affect from a distressing discussion to a positive discussion than children classified as insecurely attached. In addition, secure children were rated as more appropriate in their emotion expression than insecure children. The present study highlights attachment as a promising intervention target for children at risk for emotion dysregulation. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).