A Village: Examining the associations between social support, aggravation in parenting, child behavioral problems, and the mother-child relationship.

The following study examines the relationships between maternal social support (measured individually by instrumental, policy, and emotional), aggravation in parenting, child behavioral problems (CBPs), and the mother-child relationship during middle childhood (ages 6 to 12) and adolescence (13-18). The purpose of the study was to create nuance in the social support literature of the unique role of different types of maternal social support. The study collected data from a subsample of mothers and their children from Wave 5 (2007-2010) and Wave 6 (2014-2017) from the Future Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCW), when the child participants were 9 and 15-years-old, respectively (Reichman, 2001). Confirmatory Factor Analyses (CFAs) developed four measurement structures for each social support type. The CFAs were followed by completing four cross-lagged path analyses examining the effects of the maternal social support types and their unique longitudinal associations between the study’s three variables. The study’s hypothesis included that the three types of maternal social support (measured separately by instrumental, policy, and emotional) at T1 would have a significant association to each of the other three variables (aggravation in parenting, CBPs, and the mother-child relationship) at T2. The hypotheses result from the study found that maternal policy social support at T1 had a positive association with CBPs at T2. Additional cross-lagged path analysis results showed that the mother-child relationship at T1 had a significant association on aggravation in parenting and CBPs at T2. Clinical implications from the study included how clinicians could use more effective interventions when working with mothers and their families. Future directions emphasize the need for research to further explore the reciprocal nature of maternal social support to bolster external validity to better serve all families.