About this session

Friday, 11:30 AM - 1:00 PM

Parenting and Mental Health: Effects on Child Outcomes in Diverse Family Structures

A robust body of literature has linked various aspects of parental characteristics and behaviors to their children’s social-emotional development. The presentations included in this symposium focus on parenting and parental mental health as they relate to children’s mental health in families with diverse racial, ethnic, sexual, and gender identities. Using an ethnoracially diverse sample, Paper 1 examined the relations between parent and child psychopathology moderated by parenting. Authors report that negative parenting moderated the strength of the association between parent depression and anxiety and their children’s mental health symptoms. Paper 2 examined the understudied area of transgender parents and how experiences of discrimination and stigma impacted their parenting. Network analyses found that trans parents’ experiences of discrimination, internalized transphobia and homophobia were linked to their parenting, use of emotion regulation strategies specific to parenting, and both parent and child psychopathology. Paper 3 examined these relations specifically among Asian American families along with effects of parental sex. Here, fathers’ negative parenting intensified the association between parent depression and child psychopathology, whereas fathers’ positive parenting had less strong protective effects in the association between parent depression and child psychopathology. Finally, Paper 4 evaluated the psychometric properties of the Multidimensional Assessment of Parenting Scale (MAPS) in Sexual and Gender Minority (SGM) parents and found psychometric utility of the MAPS in measuring SGM parents’ parenting, but differential effects on parenting and their children’s psychopathology. This study highlighted the importance of examining the similarities and uniqueness of parenting by SGM parents in parenting interventions.

Paper #1
Title	The Moderating Role of Parenting in the Relation Between Parent Psychopathology and Child Outcomes
Presenting author	Rylee Abaya, Loyola University Chicago

Paper #2
Title	Network Analysis of Parenting, Stigma, and Psychopathology in Transgender Parents
Presenting author	Yasmin Butt, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Paper #3
Title	Parenting and Parent Sex Influences on the Association of Parent-Child Psychopathology in Asian Americans
Presenting author	Ashley Benhayoun, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Paper #4
Title	Psychometric Evaluation of the Multidimensional Assessment of Parenting Scale in Sexual and Gender Minority Parents
Presenting author	Antonia Yuxin Hua, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

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Session chair
Sungha Kang, Ph.D., Loyola University Chicago, United States

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