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Panel information
Panel 9. Family Context & Processes

Abstract

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While growing up with another child in the home is intuitively expected to impact infant development, empirical studies are mixed in whether the effects are largely positive or negative (e.g., Cruise and O'Reilly, 2014; McAlister & Peterson, 2007). One avenue through which the presence of children in the home may influence early development is by impacting how infants experience home chaos (i.e., unpredictability, confusion, and noise in the home environment). Specifically, it is possible that chaos in the context of siblings functions differently from general chaos such that the association between home chaos and infant stress differs in single child and multi-child homes. In the present study, we examined whether the presence of other children in the home moderates the association between infants' basal cortisol (indexed via saliva and corrected for time of day) and chaos in the home environment (measured using the Confusion, Hubbub, and Order Scale; Matheny, Wachs, Ludwig, & Phillips, 1995). In a longitudinal sample of 75 infants assessed at 3.5 and 5 months of age, a significant interaction between chaos at 3 months and children in the home was found when predicting cortisol at 5 months, controlling for chaos at 5 months, cortisol at 3 months, sociodemographic risk, and sex, ß = -.45, p = .01, see Figure 1. For infants with no other children living in the home, there was a significant positive association between home chaos and cortisol, r (37) = .32, p = .04. Unexpectedly, we also found a marginally significant negative association between household chaos and basal cortisol for infants living with other children, r (29) = -.33, p = .07. In other words, elevated infant stress in the context of more chaotic home environments was observed only among infants who were only children. To further understand how chaos in multi-child homes may differ from chaos in single child homes, in a sample of 3.5-month-old infants (N = 56) we examined which specific items on the CHAOS significantly differed between the family types, see Figure 2. Notably, the significant differences were largely related to the most subjective items related to general levels of energy and noise (e.g., “It is a real zoo in our home”). Single and multi-child homes did not differ on the majority of items related to planning or consistency of routines (e.g., “No matter what our family plans, it usually doesn’t seem to work out.”). These findings support our hypothesis that the nature of home chaos changes depending on whether the home is single or multi-child, perhaps indicating that the source of the chaos matters and homes that are more "chaotic" due to several young children may pose fewer threats to infant development than homes that are chaotic due to factors such as marital conflict or economic strain. Furthermore, the ability of additional children in the home to moderate the effect of home chaos on basal cortisol underscores the importance of taking into account family dynamics beyond the parent child dyad when examining infant development.

Author information

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

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