News Release

Single moms in poor, rural areas aren’t ruled by setting

Peer-Reviewed Publication

Center for Advancing Health

Good parenting style and a positive personal outlook can help black single mothers in poor rural areas raise children who do well in school and cope well with life in general, according to new research.

Despite poor surroundings and little access to services, black single mothers living in rural areas can raise socially and emotionally competent children, concludes Gene H. Brody of the University of Georgia in a study appearing in the September/October issue of Child Development.

Black mothers in rural parts of Georgia who had good self-esteem and were more often optimistic than depressed were more likely to implement good parenting practices, such as talking with their children, knowing what they are doing and where they are and generally supervising them. These factors were linked to their children developing good self-regulation, which in turn predicted performing well in school, handling social situations well and staying out of trouble.

"Active involvement in discussions with parents leads children to perceive that they have input into the norms that govern their behavior. This increases the likelihood that the children will behave in accordance with those norms in their parents' absence and evince higher levels of self-regulation," the researchers say.

Self-regulation is defined as the ability to set and attain goals, to plan a course of action and consider the consequences of their actions and to persist in this course.

The study included three sets of interviews in three years, with the mothers and teachers of 150 children who were 11 years old when the study began. Three-quarters of the families had incomes below the poverty level as set by the Census Bureau.

The study showed that mothers with more years of formal education had higher incomes and were also more likely to have higher levels of self-esteem and optimism and were less likely to be depressed. The women were, in turn, more likely to be supportive and involved in their children's lives while also engaging in regular dialogues with their children.

"Children approaching early adolescence are more inclined to adopt parental norms and values when they and their parents openly discuss issues and potential areas of disagreement as part of the flow of daily events," Brody explains. "Such discussions have been found to promote the development of conventional standards of conduct."

Over their lifetimes, children who are able to set goals, plan how to attain them and work persistently toward them are better able to adapt to their environment and develop their potential.

"Implicit in this study's theory and design is the idea that involved, vigilant, supportive home environments provide a context that fosters the development of these abilities, a hypothesis that our prospective findings support," says Brody.

The study was funded by a grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

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FOR MORE INFORMATION
Health Behavior News Service: (202) 387-2829 or www.hbns.org.
Interviews: Contact Kim Carlyle at (706) 583-0913 or kosborne@uga.edu
Child Development: Contact Angela Dahm Mackay at (734) 998-7310 or admackay@umich.edu.


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