Family Life Project, Phase I, United States, September 2003-January 2008

 The purpose of this project is to study the early development of a group of children who are at risk regarding later successful adjustment and for whom we have little information: children living in rural, largely poor communities. A birth cohort of 800 children in three rural counties of North Carolina and 600 children in three rural counties of Pennsylvania were studied over the first 3 years of life. A multidisciplinary team investigated multiple levels of influences affecting the early development of these children.

The research emphases of the component research projects include the following:

• Project I: Temperament: Emphasizes the development of child-related factors and how they predict preschool social-emotional and cognitive competence
• Project II: School Readiness: Emphasizes the pathways to and precursors of school readiness
• Project III: Family Process: Emphasizes how family processes mediate or moderate the effects of rural poverty on children
• Project IV: Work and Family: Emphasizes the impact of parents' occupational conditions on parenting, and, in turn, children's social, cognitive, emotional and linguistic development
• Project V: Ethnography: Emphasizes two components:

1. an in-depth contextual appraisal of community characteristics
2. a family ethnography with 72 families developmentally ahead of the cohort above to provide input to design and measurement

This project used a cumulative risk model to examine the relation between social risk and children's executive functioning, language development and behavioral competence at 36 months. Using both the Family Process Model of development and the Family Investment Model of development, observed parenting was examined over time in relation to child functioning at 36 months. Different aspects of observed parenting were examined as mediators/moderators of risk in predicting child outcomes. Results suggested that cumulative risk was important in predicting all three major domains of child outcomes and that positive and negative parenting and maternal language complexity were mediators of these relations. Maternal positive parenting was found to be a buffer for the most risky families in predicting behavioral competence. In a final model using both family process and investment measures, there was evidence of mediation but with little evidence of the specificity of parenting for particular outcomes. Results demonstrate the importance of cumulative risk and parenting in understanding child competence in rural poverty and the implications for possible intervention strategies that might be effective in maximizing the early development of these children.