It Takes a Village: Non-maternal Caregiving and Its Effects on Wellbeing in Early Childhood

Abstract

Four percent of children in the U.S. live with custodial caregivers other than their biological parents. In addition, a significant proportion of children worldwide live in intergenerational households, receiving care from parents and other kin. However, little attention has been paid to non-parental custodial caregiving outside of a limited body of literature examining grandparental care. Even less attention has been given to the effects of intergenerational caregiving on child wellbeing. The purpose of this dissertation is to expand the caregiving literature into two unique contexts: non-parental custodial care in the context of maternal incarceration in the U.S. and intergenerational care in Singapore. The first manuscript reports the use of thematic analysis of semi-structured qualitative interviews to explore how incarcerated mothers and those connected with them in the community form caregiving relationships for infants born during their mothers’ incarceration in Georgia. The second manuscript uses a mixed methods approach to analyze data on caregiving arrangements and caregiving stability for infants exposed prenatally to maternal incarceration in Georgia. The third manuscript utilizes autoregressive latent trajectory models with structured residuals to explore how maternal and child sleep affect each other over the first two years of life and whether these relationships are moderated by the presence of a non-parental nighttime caregiver. I found that in forming caregiving relationships for infants born to incarcerated mothers, families prioritize keeping the infant out of the formal child welfare system, the safety and security of the infant and whether the infant can remain with their biological family. In addition, mothers choose caregivers they feel will allow them to reunify with their child on release from prison. I also found that approximately one fifth of infants exposed prenatally to maternal incarceration experience instability in non-maternal caregivers, a phenomenon largely driven by child welfare involvement. Being placed with a kinship caregiver at birth was protective against non-maternal caregiving instability. Finally, I found that among mother/child dyads in Singapore, mothers experiencing higher depressive scores and better sleep at three months reported that their child had longer nighttime sleep duration at 12 months. These relationships were not moderated by the presence of a non-parental nighttime caregiver.