Black autistic children are more likely to be misdiagnosed, receive access to substandard services, and are almost twice as likely to have a co-occurring intellectual disability. As a result, we must thoroughly examine how to address these health disparities for Black families rearing an autistic child. This gaping hole in research contributes to poor outcomes for Black autistic children and their caregivers.
Decades of research also has established that parenting matters to the growth and development of all young children. However, multiple factors play a role in how parenting is enacted with children and are associated with differences across groups in factors that promote resilience or increase risk. Our team will identify risk and resilience factors underlying health disparities, with a focus on parental mental health among Black parents of autistic children (ages 3–9) and the downstream effects on child behavioral and developmental outcomes.
While health disparities amongst Black autistic children and caregivers should be addressed, solutions can only be identified when areas of resilience are examined in addition to risk. Black parents have social capital and assets that they can effectively use to improve outcomes for themselves and their children. Using qualitative methods, Morgan and Stahmer (2020) found that Black mothers of autistic children leveraged various types of social capital, such as social networks, to advocate on their children’s behalf. Tailored interventions or service delivery models designed to reduce health disparities for Black autistic children should leverage these areas of strength.
Examining the heterogeneity of Black families with autistic children is a much needed and critical next step for autism research in order to develop effective intervention approaches. A sequential explanatory mixed methods research design, where the qualitative data are used to help interpret quantitative findings, involving Black parents of autistic children, ages 3-9 (n=300), will be used to address the following specific aims:
Aim 1: Understand the impact of risk (e.g., trauma influencing parents’ trust and engagement with service systems) and resilience (e.g., access to social support) on the mental health outcomes of Black parents of autistic children.
Hypothesis: More experiences with trauma will negatively impact parents’ quality of life and increase stress and strain associated with rearing an autistic child.
Aim 2: Examine whether parents’ experiences with trauma adversely affects child behavior and development.
Hypothesis: Increased trauma amongst parents will be associated with more negative parent-child interactions and children having worse adaptative behavior and exhibiting more challenging behavior.
Aim 3: Determine social capital factors such as income moderate the impact on identified risk factors on parental well-being.
Hypothesis: We expect that trauma will have less of an impact on parental well-being for parents who can effectively leverage their assets, specifically, their aspirational (measure of parent expectations), social (measure of social networks), and navigational (measure of parent advocacy) capital.
Exploratory Aim 4: Using moderated moderation analysis, explore whether social capital factors and parental well-being both moderate the impact of risk factors on child behaviors and development.
This is an exploratory aim to examine a three-way interaction between parents’ social capital, well-being and their experiences with trauma to understand how those latent constructs affect child outcomes.
