Within families: family-wide and child-specific influences on children’s socio-emotional
development
Jennifer Jenkins, Jon Rasbash, Tom O’Connor
Behavioral genetic findings of siblings being so different from one another once genetic effects
were controlled
What is the effect of the family environment?
Focus on the similar and different experiences
of siblings in families
Themes• Do family-wide or child-specific aspects of
the environment predict change in child behavior?
• How similar are children’s experiences in families? Does this vary as a function of stresses in the environment?
• What are children’s own contributions to the stressful environments that they experience?
Datasets• NLSCY, ABSS, NEAD• All involve the inclusion of multiple
children per family: between 2-4 depending on dataset
• Some involve multi-informant data• Some results involve examining change in
the response variable: longitudinal design• All use multilevel modeling for the analysis
Jenkins, Rasbash, O’Connor (2003) DPJenkins, Simpson, Dunn, Rasbash, O’Connor (2005) CDJenkins, Dunn, O’Connor, Rasbash, Behnke, JFP. In pressRasbash, Jenkins, O’Connor, In preparation
OutcomeVariable
Between FamilyComparisons
Family A Family B
1 2
FamilyLevel
Child Level
Majority of environmental studies of family influencesfamily and child-specific processes are confounded
Environmental studies using sibling design: unconfounds family andchild
Family A
Family B
Family Level
Child Level
Between family comparisons
Within family comparisons
1 2 3
Cross-level interactions
Measures at the family and child-specific levels
3
FamilyA
FamilyB
Family averagenegativity
Child’sdeviation fromthe family mean
1 2
Lowincome/education
Child’sfriendshipsoutside family
2
Do family-wide or child-specific aspects of the environment predict
change in child behavior?
Illustrate with results from sibling study
Are there within family differences on sibling dyad
negativity?
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
Between familyvarianceWithin familyvariance
ICC = .52
Shared effects: Av maternal negativity predicts an increase in sibling negativity over 2 years
0
4
8
Av maternal negativity one unit change inmaternal negativity
Family average is a stronger predictor of sibling negativity than dyad-specific negativity
Mean of sibling negativity as a function of gender of sibling
dyad
5.2
5.4
5.6
5.8
6
6.2
6.4
6.6
6.8
7
Girl dyadBoy dyadMixed dyad
Girl dyads differ significantly from mixed dyads
*
*
Thus there are some systematic reasons that some dyads get on
better than others
And shared experiences are important
To what extent do siblings live in shared environments?
Shared family environments?
Exposure to parental conflict
Family Blue Family Yellow Family Pink
Families differ from one another on how much parental conflict children experience
Shared family environments?
Children within families differ from one another on how much parental conflict they experience
Exposure to parental conflict
Family Blue Family Yellow Family Pink
Sibling similarity on experiences surrounding parental conflict
0
0.2
0.4
0.6
argument about children exposure to conflict
ICC
To what extent do siblings live in shared
environments? Does this vary as a function of environmental stress?
Modeling differential experience in families
Differential parental positivity as a function of SES, marital problems and family size.
-2.0 -1.5 -1.0 -0.5 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0
household ses
1
2
3
4
5
diffe
rentia
l po
sitive p
are
nting
family size = 2, no marital problemsfamily size = 2, marital problemsfamily size > 2, marital problemsfamily size > 2, no marital problems
Differential parental hostility as a function of single parenthood and marital dissatisfaction.
Intact/no maritalproblem
Marital problem Single parent4.2
5.2
6.2
7.2
differential negativity
Limitations of this method
Measurement problems. Although in some of the studies the IV and DV are based on different informants, the family clustering information is based on single informant. Degree of family clustering that we see may be related to same person reporting on measures for different siblings
Another method for examining similar and differential
experiences in families as well as consistency of behavior when
interacting with different members of the family
Social relations model
• Every person in a family interacts with every other person• Rate each person’s expression of negativity and positivity
towards every other family member• Data are observational
Within family structure
Family 1…
Relationship: c1c2 c1m c1f c2c1 c2m c2f mc1 mc2 mf fc1 fc2 fm
Actor: c1 c2 m f
Partner: c1 c2 m f
Dyad d1 d2 d3 d4 d5 d6
We start with 12 relationship scores in each family. These can be classified :
partner dyad and familyactor
Interpretation of variance components
Family:the extent to which families differ from one another
Actor: the extent to which individuals act similarly across relationships.
Partner: the extent to which individuals elicit the same behaviors from others.
Dyad: The extent to which emotion expression is specific to the dyad and based on reciprocity.
Consistency of individual emotional expression across
dyads: a function of the dyad or the individual?
% of variance explained by actor, partner and dyad for positivity and
negativity:
05
1015202530354045
Actor Partner Dyad
Positivity Negativity
• People are very consistent in their positivity across relationships irrespective of what their interactional partner is doing. Not so of negativity.
• The partner effect is surprisingly small
Negativity is less internal to the person and more sparked off by behavior of interactional partner
than positivity
High reciprocity for negativity
Extent to which families are different from one another
% of variance at the family level
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
16
18
20
Positivity Negativity
Do characteristics of individuals affect the dyads in which they interact or do they exert their
influence across the whole family?
Example depression
An individual’s depression score may explain family level
variance or only variance in dyads in which the individual is a
member.
Example of data coding to examine effects on families or dyads
Family (spillover) and dyad effects of depression on NEGATIVITY
Depression score Significance
Child 1 at family level *
Child 2 at family level *
Mother at family level ns
Father at family level *
Child 1 at dyad level ns
Child 2 at dyad level ns
Mother at dyad level *
Father at dyad level ns
Family (spillover) and dyad effects of depression on POSITIVITY
Depression score Significance
C1 at family level ns
C2 at family level ns
Mother at family level ns
Father at family level *
C1 at dyad level ns
C2 at dyad level ns
Mother at dyad level ns
Father at dyad level ns
Advantages of multilevel methods for family data
• Differentiating between family-wide and child-specific processes in families
• Highly stressful environments increase the variation in the within family environment
• Social relations model allows us to look at consistency of individual’s behavior in families, how different families are from one another and why
Disadvantages of multilevel approach to families
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Cross discipline collaboration is essential!!!