Parent Characteristics Associated with Neurodevelopmental Competence for Young Children Experiencing Family Homelessness

Children rely on their parents or other primary caregivers to support the neurodevelopmental underpinnings of resilience, including social and emotional skills and neurocognitive executive functions. When adversity compounds a child’s risk for poor outcomes, the functioning and wellbeing of parents may add to, or buffer children from, negative impacts. With a sample of 231 children ages 3–5 and their parents experiencing homelessness, we screened parents for depression, post-traumatic stress symptoms (PTS), and overreactive parenting and assessed how these factors were associated with children’s neurodevelopment. We used confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling to identify a latent variable of caregiver distress. Results are displayed as standardized coefficients to increase the interpretability of the latent variables, rendering them in standard deviation units. Key findings indicate significant associations between caregiver mental health and multiple domains of child development. Results indicate that a one unit increase in parent distress was negatively associated with child neurodevelopmental functioning equivalent to several months delay. Within the parent functioning construct, depression and PTS showed strong loadings, while overreactive parenting was moderately associated. This represents a substantial difference in the real lives of parents and children experiencing homelessness. Implications for practice and policy and the need for two-generational and family-centered approaches are discussed.