Firstborn

Abstract: Objective To test the effect of prenatal and infancy home visits by nurses on 12-year-old, firstborn children's use of substances, behavioral adjustment, and academic achievement. Design Randomized controlled trial. Setting Public system of obstetric and pediatric care in Memphis, Tennessee. Participants We studied 12-year-old, firstborn children (n = 613) of primarily African American, economically disadvantaged women (743 randomized during pregnancy). Intervention Program of prenatal and infancy home visits by nurses. Outcome Measures Use of cigarettes, alcohol, and marijuana; internalizing, externalizing, and total behavioral problems; and academic achievement. Results By the time the firstborn child was 12 years of age, those visited by nurses, compared with those in the control group, reported fewer days of having used cigarettes, alcohol, and marijuana during the 30-day period before the 12-year interview (0.03 vs 0.18, P = .02) and were less likely to report having internalizing disorders that met the borderline or clinical threshold (22.1% vs 30.9%, P = .04). Nurse-visited children born to mothers with low psychological resources, compared with their control group counterparts, scored higher on the Peabody Individual Achievement Tests in reading and math (88.78 vs 85.70, P = .009) and, during their first 6 years of education, scored higher on group-administered standardized tests of math and reading achievement (40.52 vs 34.85, P = .02). No statistically significant program effects were found on children's externalizing or total behavioral problems. Conclusions Through age 12, the program reduced children's use of substances and internalizing mental health problems and improved the academic achievement of children born to mothers with low psychological resources. Trial Registration clinicaltrials.gov Identifier:NCT00438165

Abstract: 3 questions regarding family interaction in the second year of life are addressed in this report on 69 families rearing firstborn sons. Question 1 concerns the identification, via cluster analysis, of families having difficulty managing their child, using codings of narrative records of family interaction when children were 15 and 21 months of age. Parents in families identified as "troubled" at each age tried to control their toddlers most often, were least likely to rely upon control-plus-guidance management strategies, had children who defied them most frequently, and experienced the greatest escalation of negative affect in these control encounters. Families identified as "troubled" at both 15 and 21 months had children who received the highest "externalizing" problem scores at 18 months and mothers who experienced the most daily hassles during the second year. Question 2 concerns the antecedents of "trouble in the second year." Discriminant function analyses indicated that membership in the groups of families that appeared troubled at both ages of measurement (n = 15), at only one age (n = 28), or never (n = 26) could be reliably predicted (hit rate = 71%) using a set of 9 measurements of parent personality, child emotionality/temperament, marital quality, work-family relations, and social support, suggested by Belsky's model of the determinants of parenting, and social class. Question 3 concerns the proposition that extensive nonmaternal care in the first year is a risk factor for troubled family functioning in the second year. As hypothesized, prediction analysis showed that families at moderate and high contextual risk (based on 10 antecedent variables pertaining to Question 2), were significantly more likely to experience trouble in the second year when children experienced 20 or more hours per week of nonmaternal care in their first year, and these results could not be attributed to "selection effects."

Abstract: Changes in sibling intimacy and conflict were charted from middle childhood through adolescence, and family structure and relationship correlates of change were examined. Participants were mothers, fathers, and firstborn (M=11.82 years at Time 1) and secondborn (M=9.22 years) siblings from 200 White, working/middle class, 2-parent families. Sibling intimacy was highest for sisters, stable over time for same-sex dyads, and showed a U-shaped change pattern in mixed-sex dyads. Sibling conflict declined after early adolescence at the same time (but at different ages) for firstborn and secondborns. Maternal acceptance covaried positively with sibling intimacy, and father–child conflict covaried positively with sibling conflict over time; fathers' marital love was linked to sibling intimacy in a pattern suggestive of compensation.

Abstract: SUMMARY Interaction between mother and firstborn child before and after the birth of a second child was studied in 41 families, using home observations and interview techniques. Decreases in maternal attention and play, increases in confrontation, and changes in the balance of responsibility for initiating interaction were found. Changes in patterns of association between maternal and child variables after the birth of the sibling were primarily the result of changes in individual differences in child behaviour.