Exploring Correlates of Child Internalizing and Externalizing Psychopathology: The Role of Family Communication and Maternal Coping Skills

Background and Purpose: The stress of political turmoil, financial strain and anxiety about sufficient food for children likely have grave repercussions for functioning of Ukrainian parents and further affect their children’s mental health. We aimed to explore how mother ways of coping with stress impact family communication and child internalizing and externalizing behaviors (Zeman et al., 2006). We hypothesized that (1) child internalizing behaviors would be associated with mother preference for emotion-focused coping and poor family communication; and (2) child externalizing problems would be related to poor family communication and lower scores on mother problem-focused coping strategies.

Methods: We used cross-sectional, community-based sample of 294 mothers (M_age = 37.12, SD = 5.67, 94% Ukrainian) and their biological children aged 9-16 (M_age = 12.49, SD = 5.67, 50.68% girls) from three Ukrainian regions. Parents answered questions from revised Ways of Coping (Folkman & Lazarus, 1985), Family Communication scale (Olson, 2011), Child Behavior Checklist (Achenbach, 1991), and questions about their age, education, income, employment, child gender, and age. Two robust multiple regression models tested the relationship between child externalizing and internalizing problems (dependent variables) and mother coping, family communication, and sociodemographic variables (independent variables). Bootstrapping mediation analyses (Hayes, 2013) were used to test whether family communication played a mediating role between mother’s planful problem solving and child internalizing and externalizing behaviors.

Results: Child internalizing behaviors were associated with female gender (B = -2.5, p < .01), lower family income (B = -.003, p < .05), poor family communication (B = -.19, p<.01), mother coping by accepting responsibility (B = 2.13, p<.05), escape-avoidance (B = 3.7, p<.01) and planful problem solving (B = 2.80, p<.05). Child externalizing behaviors were associated with male gender (B = 3.48, p < .01), mother unemployment (B = -2.80, p < .05), poor family communication (B = -.46, p<.001), mother coping by seeking social support (B = 3.25, p<.01), and lower use of positive reappraisal (B = -1.52, p<.05). Child gender buffered the impacts of family communication on child internalizing behaviors, and the interaction term was statistically significant (B = .17, p<.05). Family communication mediated the effect of mothers’ planful problem solving on both child internalizing and externalizing behaviors (ab = -.7, p < .05; ab = -1.58, p<.05, respectively).

Conclusions and Implications: As expected, boys were more likely to develop externalizing behaviors and girls were at risk for internalizing problems. Next, children adjustment problems were associated with mother coping strategies and the quality of family communication. This finding suggests the need for prevention policies and programming that would specifically target these domains. Additionally, children with fewer mental health symptoms were more likely to live in wealthier homes with mothers who had a job. Taken together, these results underscore the need for multi-faceted interventions targeting parent coping skills, interpersonal relations among family members as well as larger, socioeconomic processes in Ukraine.