Alicia Douglas

Instructor: Ms. Funmi Adesean

EPRS 4900-003

15 February 2018

The Early Childhood Experience in the Low-Socioeconomic African American Home:

The Psychological and Sociological Correlations

Annotated Bibliography

As an African American woman, who now has her own family, I have done a lot of reflecting on

my upbringing and how much it helped and did not help me grow into a well-balanced

individual. A lot of the trauma that occurred in my childhood and adolescence, unbeknownst to

me at the time, is still being worked on. And I gathered that to heal old wounds and prevent, or

lessen, new ones from forming in the current generation, much discussion, experiments, trial and

error, and healing must be done. I am doing my research on the early childhood experience in the

African American home. The concentrated ages will be from 0 to 8 years old, which the first six

years of development are most important in a humans’ life. I will primarily focus on the parental

units of influence, the effects of low-socioeconomic status, depression among African American

mothers and its interference with operative parenting as well as drawing in the psychological and

sociological parallels to create a healthy childhood experience for African American children.

1. Fothergill, K., Ensminger, M.E., Doherty, E.E., Juon, H., & Green, K.M. (2016). Pathways

from Early Childhood Adversity and Later Adult Drug Use and Psychological Distress: A
 Prospective Study of a Cohort of African Americans. Journal of Health & Social

Behavior, 57(2), 223-239. doi:10.1177/0022126516646808

In this article, investigators researched the negative effects of childhood adversity on physical,

emotional and cognitive development in childhood and connected those outcomes with those of

the health and psychopathology in adulthood. These analysists found that the timing and

circumstances of environments early in life have a significant effect on later life outcomes. It was

reported in the investigators findings that adversity faced during first grade (age 6), which

includes: low family socioeconomic status, high household crowding, poor maternal mental

health and poor family physical health, lead to first grade classroom maladaptive behavior:

immaturity, aggressive behavior, restlessness. This carries onto Adolescent maladaptive

behavior: substance abuse, weak social bonds (both family and school), beginning of mental

health problems and settles in with early (age 32) and Mid (age 42) adulthood psychological

distress and drug use. There were minor differences in gender associations and the affects of the

above situations. The finding that SES leads to first-grade maladaptive

behavior suggests that African American males and females from low-SES families both need

additional support to succeed in the role of student and prevent a trajectory of maladaptation.

2. Hackman, D. A., Betancourt, L. M., Brodsky, N. L., Kobrin, L., Hurt, H., & Farah, M. J.

(2013).

Selective Impact of Early Parental Responsivity on Adolescent Stress Reactivity. Plos

ONE, 8(3), 1-9. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0058250

This research studies the parental behaviors in early childhood and the reaction to the child’s

stress level in relation to the limbic hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA-axis) which

mobilizes and facilitate the flight or fight response. In particular, this study was designed to

capture the effectiveness of parental reactivity to early childhood stress related to warmth and

responsivity independent of other parenting behaviors such as behavioral control and physical

discipline. The researchers studied African American children from birth to adolescence, while at

four years old the Early Childhood Home Observation Measurement of the Environment (HOME

scale) was administered, and as the children got older they were administered a Trier Social

Stress Test (TSST), with which their saliva was collected to measure cortisol levels. The

researchers found that very high levels of support and enrichments and well as very high levels

of conflict and adversity promote biological reactivity to context. Overall, high levels of parental

responsivity, warmth, calm verbal communication with the child(ren), may buffer the effect of a

moderately stressful, low-SES environment, and early childhood parental responsivity predicts

the reaction to a social stressor during adolescence, well over the effects of discipline, early

developmental markers, life stress, violence exposure and current psychosocial functioning.

3. Klein, K., & Forehand, R. (2000). Family Processes as Resources for African American

Children Exposed to a Constellation of Sociodemographic Risk Factors. Journal of

Clinical Child Psychology, 29(1), 53

This research explores the stresses that African American children are exposed to and how

parental monitoring and a supportive mother-child relationship plays into effect. The direct and

interactive associations between risk factors, family processing variables, the children’s

depressive moods and disruptive behavior all were assessed. Within the article it is claimed that

children who reside in impoverished areas endure an increased risk of facing emotional and
behavioral difficulties. This study focused risk for children (ages 6 to 12) living in disadvantaged

areas by utilizing the risk factor index (RFI) and it assessed the following eight

sociodemographic risk factors: child’s stressful life events, mother’s age at birth of the child,

mother’s education level, mother’s HIV status, mother’s cognitive functioning and reading

ability, mother’s psychological distress, mother’s stressful life events, and family’s perceived

economic stress. The researchers found that the familial exposure to multiple risk factors

associated with difficulties in child functioning, and that family processes can aid in more

optimal functioning among children who are exposed to multiple stressors and that a positive

mother-child relationship is associated with lower levels of childhood depression and disruptive

behavior.

4. Lee, H. Y., & Hans, S. L. (2015). Prenatal Depression and Young Low-Income Mothers’

Perception of Their Children from Pregnancy Through Early Childhood. Infant Behavior

& Development, 40183-192 doi:10.1016/j.ingbeh.2015.06.008

This study investigated the perceptions of young mothers, aged 13-21, on their mother-child

interactions at birth throughout the first two years of the early childhood experience for their

infant, and the associated pre and post-natal depressive symptoms they experienced. The article

reported that maternal depictions of the child have been shown to be linked to maternal behavior,

to infant attachment, and to infant development more generally and that mothers’ representations

of the child begin before the birth of the child. The study aims to describe prenatally depressed

mothers’ observations of child difficulty in relation to non-depressive mothers and the second

aim is to examine the influence of prenatal depression on mothers’ insight of their children over
time. All of the participants were African American girls/women, and their education totaled at

about 10.7 years across the board. The findings that investigators collected were that young, low-

socioeconomic African American mothers were 11 times more likely, than mothers without

those risk factors, to experience depressive symptoms, a negative outlook on their children, and

to perceive their children as difficult from birth through the first two years of the early childhood

experience. Within the article it is suggested that with early interventions of screening for

maternal depression during pregnancy should be available not just at postpartum, as well as the

implementation of parent-child interventions during pregnancy that will enhance the outlook

mothers have on their children.

5. Shultz, D., & Shaw, D. S. (2003). Boys’ Maladaptive Social Information Processing: Family

Emotional Climate and Pathways to Early Conduct Problems. Social Development,

12(3), 440-460. doi:10.1111/1467-9507.00242

In this article, it discusses the occurrences of boy’s behavioral issues associated with the risks of

negative emotional experiences in the home, socioeconomic disadvantages and maternal

depression. Two aspects of the SIP were examined that related to children’s behavioral

adjustment problems, (1) hostile attribution bias and (2) maladaptive response generation.

Simply put, the measures were based on response mechanisms within the children to negative

experiences outside the home. The researchers assessed the impact of traumatic experiences,

such as abuse and exposure to violence, on boys from economically disadvantaged areas.

Researchers found that Maternal depression places children at risk not only for internalizing

symptoms but also for conduct problems. Maternal depression is linked to marital strife and can
cause a rift within the family unit as a whole. The participants used during this study were 54%

Caucasian, 40% African American with 6% as other, with ages ranging from 1.5 years at the

beginning of the study, carrying on to the age of 10 for most participants. The investigators

found that that maternal depression that occurs early in children’s growth may impact children’s

emotional development more strongly than a later onset of maternal depression. And with both

risk factors combined, economic disadvantage and maternal depression, the children have a

heightened susceptibility to conduct problems.

References
Fothergill, K. E. (2016). Pathways from Early Childhood Adversity to Later Adult Drug Use and
Psychological Distress: A Prospective Study of a Cohort of African Americans. Journal of Health &
Social Behavior, 57(2), 223-239. doi:10.1177/0022146516646808
Hackman, D. A. (2013). Selective Impact of Early Prenatal Responsivity on Adolescent Stress Reactivity.
Plos ONE, 8(3), 1-9. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0058250

Klien, K. &. (2000). Family Processes as Resources for African American Children Exposed to a
Constellation of Sociodemographic Risk Factors. JOurnal of Clinical CHild Psychology, 29(1), 53.

Lee, H. Y. (2015). Prenatal Depression and Young Low-Income Mothers' Perception of Their Children
from Pregnancy Through Early Childhood. Infant Behavior & Development , 40; 183-192.
doi:10.1016/j.infbeb.2015.06.008

Shultz, D. &. (2003). Boys' Maladaptive Social Information Processing: Family Emotional Climate, and
Pathways to Early Conduct Problems. Social Development, 12(3), 440-460. doi:10.1111/1467-
9507.00242