Parental Involvement and Children's Extra-Familial Contexts

Parental involvement has been shown to be a robust predictor of child conduct problems (CP) and drug use risk in childhood and adolescence, but relatively little attention has been paid to the role of parental involvement in relation to child problem behavior during the transition to school-age, when children are spending more time in school, after-care settings, and in the neighborhood. Concomitantly, as children transition from preschool to school-age, there is evidence to suggest that the quality and organization of schools, after-school care, and neighborhoods play an increasingly important role in the emergence of children's CP and drug use risk. Specifically, we will address: 1) the extent to which the quality of school environments, after-school care, and neighborhoods are associated with the emergence of CP during the early school-age period; 2) how parental involvement in the toddler and preschool period may be associated with parental involvement and monitoring in extra-familial contexts in the early school-age years; 3) how parental involvement in schools, after-care, and the neighborhood, may moderate relationships between extra-familial factors and children's CP; and 4) whether a parenting intervention can increase parental involvement in school, after-care, and neighborhood contexts and decrease risk of children's subsequent CP. These issues will be tested with an existing sample of 731 ethnically-diverse children from urban, suburban, and rural sites. As all families in the study were recruited based on the presence of sociodemographic, family, and child risk factors, the cohort of children are at high risk for displaying a persistent trajectory of clinically-meaningful CP and drug use risk. Thus, the study has the potential to fill a much-needed void on associations between extra-familial contexts and risk for early-starting CP and later problem behavior during the early school-age years. Equally critical, the study can provide data on the potential moderating influence of involved parenting, its malleability for families facing multiple adversities, and whether family-based interventions can make a difference for children facing multiple adversities.