Sample Of African American Families Research Articles

How Economic Stress Impacts Risky Sex among African American Adolescents.

Given the potential for unintended pregnancy and exposure to sexually transmitted infections, both of which can have long-term deleterious health consequences, the identification of predictors of adolescent risky sexual behavior remains an important line of inquiry. Although prior research has identified a variety of family and individual factors that are associated with risky sexual behavior, few studies have examined the role of family economic stress. The current study utilized three waves of data from a community sample of African American families with adolescents (N = 778, 54% girls, average age = 10.4 years old at Wave 1, 12.3 years old at Wave 2, 15.6 years old at Wave 3) to test the family stress model as an explanation of adolescent risky sexual behavior. Multi-group analyses examined gender differences in the family processes expected to link economic stress and risky sexual behavior. Unlike most studies utilizing this theoretical perspective, family structure was also taken into account. The results supported the propositions of the family stress model for boys and girls for both two-caregiver and single-mother households. Further, in single-mother households, maternal psychological distress continued to have a positive effect on adolescent risky sex even after taking into account the impact of parenting behaviors. Overall, the results suggest that economic stress ripples through the family system, increasing adolescent risky sexual behavior through its negative impact on family processes, highlighting the need for systemic policy changes rather than individual-level intervention/prevention efforts.

Longitudinal Links between Expressivity and African American Parent-Adolescent Relationships: A Dyadic Approach

Parents’ and youth’s personality qualities are associated with parent-child relationships. Given that gender shapes the organization and structure of family life, gender typed personality qualities may also have implications for relationships between parents and children. We examined longitudinal linkages between expressivity, a gender typed personality quality, and parent-child warmth and conflict in a sample of African American families and tested if parental stress moderated these associations. Data came from mothers, fathers, and two adolescent-aged siblings (53% girls) from 185 families who participated in a three-year longitudinal study. In home interviews, parents and youth rated their own expressive qualities and perceptions of their relationship. Mothers and fathers also reported their family and work-related stress. Results from Actor-Partner Interdependence Models showed that youth’s expressivity positively predicted their own and their parents’ perceptions of relationship warmth and negatively predicted their own and their parents’ perceptions of conflict. Mothers’ expressivity positively predicted their own and youth’s perceptions of warmth and fathers’ expressivity positively predicted only their own perceptions of warmth. Parents’ expressivity was unrelated to conflict. Parental stress moderated the expressivity parent-youth relationship linkages differently for mothers and fathers. Youth’s expressivity more strongly predicted maternal warmth among mothers who experienced low versus high stress. Youth’s expressivity predicted lower conflict among fathers who experienced high stress. Findings underscore the utility of moving beyond biological sex to examine the role of gender typed qualities in parent-child relationships during adolescence, as well as the contexts in which those processes are embedded.

Educational Expectations in African American Families: Assessing the Importance of Immediate Performance Requirements

Prior research has shown that parents’ educational expectations contribute positively to several student academic outcomes, including grades in school, standardized test scores, and school completion. These expectations are typically conceptualized as long-term educational attainment beliefs, and consequently, it remains unclear how parents’ short-term expectations for performance (i.e., grades in school) impact their children’s academic success. It is conceivable, for example, that the greater immediacy and actionability of short-term performance expectations make them highly important to student achievement as well. Moreover, previous research on parents’ expectations of any type has rarely considered African American families specifically. In response, the present study uses hierarchical regression modeling with an intra-racially diverse longitudinal sample of African American families to examine the degree to which African American parents’ short- and long-term educational expectations simultaneously impact their children’s academic achievement. Results suggest that independent of prior performance and social background, African American parents’ short-term requirements for performance are more important to their children’s grades in school than are expectations for long-term attainment. This finding was likely obfuscated in prior research by a lack of simultaneous consideration of short- and long-term expectations, particularly in the African American family context. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

Childhood poverty, catecholamines, and substance use among African American young adults: The protective effect of supportive parenting

From a sample of African American families living in the rural South, this study tested the hypothesis that growing up in poverty is associated with heightened biological stress levels in youth that, in turn, forecast elevations in drug use in young adulthood. Supportive parenting during adolescence was hypothesized to protect youth's biological stress levels from rising in the context of poverty. African American youth and their primary caregivers from 385 families participated in a 14-year prospective study that began when youth were 11 years of age. Data were collected from 2001 to 2016. All families lived in impoverished communities in the rural South. Linear regression models and conditional indirect effect analyses were executed in 2016 to test the study hypotheses. High number of years living in poverty across adolescence was associated with high catecholamine levels, but only among those youth who received low levels of supportive parenting. Youth catecholamine levels at age 19 forecast an increase in substance use from age 19 to age 25. Conditional indirect effects confirmed a developmental cascade linking family poverty, youth catecholamine levels, and increases in substance use for youth who did not receive high levels of supportive parenting. Current results suggest that, for some African American youth, substance use vulnerability may develop “under the skin” from stress-related biological weathering years before elevated drug use. Receipt of supportive parenting, however, can protect rural African American youth from biological weathering and its subsequent effects on increases in substance use during adulthood.

Abstract C54: Parity and breastfeeding associations with familial estrogen receptor-negative breast cancer

Abstract Background. Disparities exist in the incidence of aggressive breast cancer characteristics by race. In order to characterize potential contributors to breast cancer disparities, we studied breastfeeding and parity characteristics in a sample of African American families with breast cancer. Based on evidence suggesting that lack of breastfeeding may influence the development of aggressive tumors, we performed both case/non-case comparisons and case-only comparisons according to receptor status. We hypothesized that African American women who developed estrogen receptor (ER)-negative and triple negative breast cancer are less likely to have ever breastfed, a shorter breastfeeding history, and more children than their sisters who did not develop breast cancer. Methods. In a sample of 281 African American women (197 breast cancer cases and 84 unaffected sisters of cases) from 106 families, we examined differences in reproductive risk factor profiles (including parity a breastfeeding histories) between women diagnosed with breast cancer and their unaffected sisters using t-tests and chi-square tests. In cases only, we characterized breastfeeding duration and parity according to breast cancer subtypes using t-tests. Results. African American women who developed breast cancer had an earlier age at menarche than their unaffected sisters (12.3 versus 13.1 years; p=0.01). Breast cancer cases also were more likely to have had a hysterectomy (49% versus 32%; p=0.02) and less likely to have used hormone therapy (19% versus 33%; p=0.01) compared to their sisters. Approximately 40% of cases reported ever breastfeeding compared to 50% of their non-case relatives; however this was not statistically significant (p=0.17). In case-only analyses, we observed a statistically significant shorter duration of breastfeeding in women with ER-negative compared to ER-positive tumors (11.3 versus 36.7 weeks; p=0.01), and in women with triple negative tumors compared to non-triple negative tumors (8.7 versus 35.1 weeks; p=0.00001). In terms of parity, women with ER-negative tumors had fewer births compared to ER-positive (1.54 versus 2.07 births; p=0.04). Similarly, women with triple negative tumors had significantly fewer births than cases who did not have triple negative tumors (1.39 versus 3.19 births; p=0.01). Conclusion. In a sample of African Americans with a notable family history of breast cancer, short duration of breastfeeding may represent an additional and modifiable risk factor for aggressive breast cancer. These findings support literature on the association of breastfeeding and ER-negative tumors, providing additional insight into the possible prevention of familial breast cancer. Studies including African Americans to further replicate these findings and shed light on potential biologic mechanisms are needed. Citation Format: Mattie Dibbell, Deborah Erwin, Detric Johnson, Lina Jandorf, Veronica Meadows Ray, Heather Ochs-Balcom. Parity and breastfeeding associations with familial estrogen receptor-negative breast cancer. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the Ninth AACR Conference on the Science of Cancer Health Disparities in Racial/Ethnic Minorities and the Medically Underserved; 2016 Sep 25-28; Fort Lauderdale, FL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2017;26(2 Suppl):Abstract nr C54.

Exploring the impact of skin tone on family dynamics and race-related outcomes.

Racism has historically been a primary source of discrimination against African Americans, but there has been little research on the role that skin tone plays in explaining experiences with racism. Similarly, colorism within African American families and the ways in which skin tone influences family processes is an understudied area of research. Using data from a longitudinal sample of African American families (n = 767), we assessed whether skin tone impacted experiences with discrimination or was related to differences in quality of parenting and racial socialization within families. Findings indicated no link between skin tone and racial discrimination, which suggests that lightness or darkness of skin does not either protect African Americans from or exacerbate the experiences of discrimination. On the other hand, families displayed preferential treatment toward offspring based on skin tone, and these differences varied by gender of child. Specifically, darker skin sons received higher quality parenting and more racial socialization promoting mistrust compared to their counterparts with lighter skin. Lighter skin daughters received higher quality parenting compared with those with darker skin. In addition, gender of child moderated the association between primary caregiver skin tone and racial socialization promoting mistrust. These results suggest that colorism remains a salient issue within African American families. Implications for future research, prevention, and intervention are discussed.

An Exploratory Factor Analysis of the Burden Assessment Scale with a Sample of African-American Families

It remains unclear if the factor structures of commonly used caregiver burden scales normed on white samples are similar with samples from different ethnic communities. Our study tests the factor structure of the Burden Assessment Scale (BAS) using Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) with data from low-income, African American families caring for a family member with schizophrenia. The EFA solution included a 2 factor structure of subjective burden and objective burden with strong loadings demonstrating a clear differentiation between the factors. Our results suggest that low income, African American families appear to experience caregiving burden as one major or broad component in their lives similar to other areas that demand ongoing coping and adaptation. Likewise, the factor structure found with this sample as compared to the factor structure found with white samples suggests differences in the perception of and/or the reporting of burden. Study limitations as well as implications for practice are provided.

The Effect of Racial Socialization on Urban African American Use of Child Mental Health Services

SUMMARY Objective: To examine how parental endorsement of racial socialization parenting practices relates to child mental health service use among an urban sample of African American families. Methods: A cross-sectional sample of urban African American parents (n = 96) provided ratings of their beliefs concerning various dimensions of racial socialization constructs, i.e., spiritual or religious coping (SRC), extended family caring (EFC), cultural pride reinforcement (CPR), and assessed regarding their use of child mental health services. Results: At the multivariate level, the use of child mental health services was significantly positively associated with moderate levels of endorsement of SRC and EFC. Inversely, scores in the moderate range of CPR were associated with a reduced likelihood of child mental health service use. Conclusion: Parental endorsement of racial socialization parenting practices appear to play a salient role in child mental health service use among an urban African American families. Further research with larger and more representative samples should be pursued.

The Role of Private Adoption Agencies in Facilitating African American Adoptions

The authors compare a sample of African American families who adopted from two private African American agencies in California with a sample of African American families who adopted from public California child welfare agencies. Findings show clear distinctions between the private and public adopters. The authors also present results from a questionnaire that asks about the adoption process and the families' adoptive history. Strikingly, 70% of the private agency adopters had attempted to first adopt through (primarily) public agencies, and the majority of those had been unsuccessful. Nearly 90% of the families who responded to a question of how important a private African American adoption agency was in their decision to adopt indicated that it was very important or important.

Exploratory Study of a Preventive Intervention with General Population African American Families

The authors report the intervention implementation and outcome evaluation of the Strengthening Families Program: For Parents and Youth 10-14 (SFP 10-14),involving a sample of African American families with young adolescents. Implementation feasibility clearly was demonstrated. A sufficient number of families was recruited successfully, retention rates were strong, and observer ratings showed high adherence to the intervention protocol. Control group comparisons at posttest showed positive results for intervention-targeted child behaviors and for child participation in family meetings but not for other outcome measures. Findings of the investigation are discussed in terms of their relevance to ongoing intervention research with minority populations and considered in light of study limitations.

Interactions between genetic and reproductive factors in breast cancer risk in a population-based sample of African-American families.

Incidence of breast cancer (BC) varies among ethnic groups, with higher rates in white than in African-American women. Until now, most epidemiological and genetic studies have been carried out in white women. To investigate whether interactions between genetic and reproductive risk factors may explain part of the ethnic disparity in BC incidence, a genetic epidemiology study was conducted, between 1989 and 1994, at the Howard University Cancer Center (Washington, DC), which led to the recruitment of 245 African-American families. Segregation analysis of BC was performed by use of the class D regressive logistic model that allows for censored data to account for a variable age of onset of disease, as implemented in the REGRESS program. Segregation analysis of BC was consistent with a putative dominant gene effect (P < 0.000001) and residual sister-dependence (P < 0.0001). This putative gene was found to interact significantly with age at menarche (P = 0.048), and an interaction with a history of spontaneous abortions was suggested (P = 0.08). A late age at menarche increased BC risk in gene carriers but had a protective effect in non-gene carriers. A history of spontaneous abortions had a protective effect in gene carriers and increased BC risk in non-gene carriers. Our findings agree partially with a similar analysis of French families showing a significant gene x parity interaction and a suggestive gene x age at menarche interaction. Investigating gene x risk factor interactions in different populations may have important implications for further biological investigations and for BC risk assessment.

Sexual Intercourse and Pregnancy Among African American Girls in High‐Poverty Neighborhoods: The Role of Family and Perceived Community Environment

Data are used from a random sample of African American families in impoverished Chicago neighborhoods to address two questions: How well do modeling, supervision, and marital transition hypotheses explain the relationship between family structure and early sexual debut and pregnancy for disadvantaged Black female adolescents? Do higher levels of social support from parents and neighborhood adults decrease the risk of sexual activity for youth in poor communities? Support for each hypothesis is contingent upon the family transition experienced and specific sexual outcome examined. Living in any type of married household reduces the risk of sexual debut and pregnancy. Stronger parent‐child relationships are associated with delayed sexual onset, whereas the risk of pregnancy is reduced when adolescents report more working adults in their social networks.

Nutrition: Principles of dietary modification

From a sample of African American families living in the rural South, this study tested the hypothesis that growing up in poverty is associated with heightened biological stress levels in youth that, in turn, forecast elevations in drug use in young adulthood. Supportive parenting during adolescence was hypothesized to protect youth's biological stress levels from rising in the context of poverty. African American youth and their primary caregivers from 385 families participated in a 14-year prospective study that began when youth were 11 years of age. Data were collected from 2001 to 2016. All families lived in impoverished communities in the rural South. Linear regression models and conditional indirect effect analyses were executed in 2016 to test the study hypotheses. High number of years living in poverty across adolescence was associated with high catecholamine levels, but only among those youth who received low levels of supportive parenting. Youth catecholamine levels at age 19 forecast an increase in substance use from age 19 to age 25. Conditional indirect effects confirmed a developmental cascade linking family poverty, youth catecholamine levels, and increases in substance use for youth who did not receive high levels of supportive parenting. Current results suggest that, for some African American youth, substance use vulnerability may develop “under the skin” from stress-related biological weathering years before elevated drug use. Receipt of supportive parenting, however, can protect rural African American youth from biological weathering and its subsequent effects on increases in substance use during adulthood.