About this srcd poster session

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Panel information
Panel 9. Family Context & Processes

Abstract

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Raising a baby is said to be so challenging that “it takes a village,” but some family systems function with one caregiver while others function with many. An increase in multigenerational, LGBTQ+, single-parent, divorced and/or remarried, and multiple families has been seen and these diverse family systems require study into how it affects childrearing (Parke, 2013). But how does the number of caregivers involved in an infant’s life affect things like parent stress and distress and reactivity of the infant? Perceived social support by a new mom was found to be essential for reducing fatigue and symptoms of postpartum depression (Iwata, Mori, Sakajo, Aoki, Maehara & Tamakoshi, 2018). The Parental Stress Scale (PSS) is being used to measure caregiver stress, the Infant Behavior Questionnaire-Revised Short Form (IBQ-R SF) and its subscales (distress to limitations and falling reactivity) are being used to measure infant stress, and The Brief Social Support Scale (BS6) will be used to measure perceived social support. The general purposes of this study are a) to examine the relationship between the number of caregivers and infant stress, to explore whether caregiver stress mediates that relationship, and b) to investigate the effect that social support plays in the association between the number of caregivers and caregiver stress.
Data collection is ongoing, with an expected sample size of 140 family systems with a 3-month-old infant (current N = 66). Multiple regression will be performed in SPSS and PROCESS where mediation will be analyzed through indirect effects and moderation through interactions, see Figure 1. We hypothesize that the direct relationship between the number of caregivers and infant stress is mediated by caregiver stress, such that fewer caregivers involved in a family system is related to increased caregiver stress and subsequent elevated infant distress and reactivity. We also hypothesize that the relationship between the number of caregivers and caregiver stress will be moderated by social support whereby the indirect effect of many caregivers resulting in lower caregiver stress is only present for family systems with high perceived social support. Support for these hypotheses would indicate that there might not be an ideal number of caregivers involved in raising an infant. A scatter plot matrix with the variables of interest has been included in Figure 2. Preliminary results show that several associations are significant in our predicted direction, with the number of caregivers predicting lower parental stress [ r (52) = -.296, p = .030], and social support significantly predicting lower parenting stress [r (52) = -.490, p < .001], and lower distress to limitations [r (37) = -.367, p =.022]. The results of this study have the potential to elucidate the complex relationship between caregiver number and infant distress and reactivity, as well as emphasize the importance of family function over form.

Author information

Author	Role
Abby Jenson, University of Missouri, St. Louis	Presenting author
Theresa Moore, University of Missouri, St. Louis	Non-presenting author
Hannah White, University of Missouri, St. Louis	Non-presenting author

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