Research That Matters (January 17 - 20, 2008)

Purpose: Mental health functioning of maltreated children has received much attention because of the relationship of maltreatment to psychopathology and the high utilization of mental health services by child welfare clients. Parental reports of mental health functioning have served as either the sole or an important indicator of the level of children's functioning both in research and by child serving agencies. We were interested in understanding whether characteristics of the caregivers and the caregiver's relationship to the child might influence the way in which they evaluated their children's problems and whether this was different from caregivers of non maltreated children. Specifically, we hypothesized that caregivers' depression, anxiety, and their parenting attitudes would influence ratings of their children's problem behaviors and that this relationship would differ among the caregivers of maltreated and non maltreated children.

Method: This paper reports findings from a NICHD funded longitudinal study of child maltreatment in urban adolescents and their caregivers. This study included data from 308 female caretakers of both maltreated and comparison adolescents and their children. Parent measures were the Adult Adolescent Parenting Inventory, Brief Symptom Inventory, and the Child Behavior Checklist. Child measures were the Youth Self Report and the Children's Depression Inventory. The caregivers were biological mothers of maltreated children (BIOM, = 107), foster mothers of maltreated children (NBIOM N=100), and mothers of comparison children (COMP N=101). Structural Equation Modeling analyses were performed with Mplus4.0. Latent path analyses evaluated whether the mothers' own mental health (i.e. depression, anxiety) and parenting predicted her report of the child's CBCL scores while controlling for the child's self-reported problems (YSR, CDI) and demographics. Multi-group analyses were conducted to test the moderating effects of type of caretaker on the structural relationships.

Results: The structural model fit the data well (CFI=.94, RMSEA=.067). Mothers' anxiety (beta=.27) and parenting (beta=-.14) predicated mothers' report of their children's problems. Mothers with higher levels of mental health problem and lower levels of parenting attitudes reported higher levels of children's problem. Caretaker type was a significant moderator of the structural relationships. In the BIOM group, mother's parenting (beta= -.37) and anxiety (beta= .40) significantly predicted mothers' report of children's problems. In the NBIOM group, neither mothers' mental health nor parenting predicted their report of children's problems. In the COMP group, mothers' depression symptoms (beta= .59) significantly predicted mothers' report of children's problems.

Conclusions and Implications: Caretakers characteristics influence their reporting of children's problems. Specifically, maltreating mothers' reports are influenced by both their attitudes on parenting and mental health functioning, while foster caregivers' characteristics seem less likely to affect reporting. Comparison mother's reports are influenced by their levels of depression. This would suggest that caution should be used when using parental reports of child functioning as the only measure of children's mental health functioning. Further, it points to the importance of interventions in maltreating families addressing not only parenting practices, but maltreating parent's attitudes toward parenting and their own mental health problems.