Return to school accompanied by changing associations between family ecology and cortisol

This study examines everyday family life as asocial regulator of child adrenocortical activity during the normative challenge of return to school. If positive family function facilitates child adaptation, we expected that mother-child relationships following school entry would predict individual differences in evening cortisol, a context-sensitive marker for the response to concurrent demands. Among 28 children followed longitudinally, late in pre-kindergarten those living with single and/or employed mothers had higher evening cortisol. Yet early during the following school year, children with poorer mother-child relationships had higher evening cortisol. Cortisol awakening response, a comparatively stable marker of anticipated demands, was higher with maternal employment, single parents, and busier child schedules before school re-entry, and with maternal employment afterwards. We argue for a layered ecological approach to social regulation, recognizing that family structure, family functioning, and proximal features of everyday life within the family moderate child adrenocortical activity differently across contexts. (C) 2008 Wiley Periodicals.