| dc.description.abstract | Natural disasters create prolonged social and financial demands that may alter parents’ abilities to be sensitive and responsive to their children. However, because natural disasters occur unexpectedly, limited research has examined how parenting behaviors change from before to after disaster exposure. The present study tested whether varying levels of exposure to a devastating tornado influenced parenting practices over an 18-month period pre- to post-disaster among at-risk children and their parents. Participants included 240 youth and their parents (ages 9-11; 65% male; 78% African American) who were participating in an ongoing, longitudinal preventive intervention for youth aggression prior to the tornado in April 2011. Dimensions of parenting assessed include parental involvement, low monitoring, and inconsistent and positive discipline. A natural experimental design was utilized to compare families who were exposed to the tornado to other families from the same community who completed the intervention and were assessed at all time-points prior to the disaster. Mixed effects linear models were estimated for parents by exposure group and by severity of exposure. Although patterns of change in parenting did not differ when comparing families in the exposed and non-exposed groups overall, significant differences in trajectories emerged when examining severity of tornado exposure within the exposed group. Compared to families who experienced at least one traumatic event during the tornado, families with community-level exposure reported significantly greater decreases in inconsistent discipline from pre-tornado to 12-month follow-up (d=.37). Further, direct exposure predicted trend-level increases in low parental monitoring across the full study period (d=.41). Results suggest that contextual elements of a disaster, such as personal loss and number of traumatic events experienced, are associated with inconsistency of parenting practices in the long-term aftermath of the disaster, as recovery-related demands persist. Implications for the future study of disaster exposure, parenting, and youth’s long-term self-regulation are discussed. Keywords: parenting, trauma, natural disaster, at-risk youth | |
