Modelling triadic relationships in families of children with intellectual disability.
Caitlin A Williams, Tom Bailey, Richard P Hastings
PMID 35187793WHAT IT FOUND
In families of children with intellectual disability, higher maternal distress was linked with more behaviour problems in both the child and a sibling.
Household poverty was linked with more distress and behaviour problems. These are associations, not proof that intervention changes them.
Key findings
01Maternal distress was associated with higher sibling behaviour-problem scores (β = .16) and higher child behaviour-problem scores (β = .17).
02Household poverty was associated with higher behaviour-problem scores for the sibling (β = .12) and the child with intellectual disability (β = .24).
03Sibling prosocial behaviour was not associated with the child's behaviour or maternal well-being.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for OTs
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What it does not show
The study was cross-sectional, so it cannot show that maternal distress causes behaviour problems or that behaviour problems cause maternal distress. Mothers reported all measures, so the associations are based on one person's perceptions rather than independent child or sibling reports. Only one sibling closest in age was included, so wider family relationships were not examined. The model was exploratory and used modification indices to add or remove paths, so the final pattern is not a confirmed causal model. Maternal life satisfaction was removed from the final model, so the paper does not show how life satisfaction related to child outcomes. The analysed sample was 573 families from 1184 source families, after excluding 572 without a sibling and 39 non-maternal caregivers.
Declared interests
The authors declared no conflict of interest. Funding was from Cerebra (PhD scholarship) and the University of Warwick.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read these findings as proof that maternal distress causes child behaviour problems or that improving child behaviour will reduce maternal distress. The data were collected once, all from mothers, and no intervention was tested.