In the Wake of the Great Recession: Economic Uncertainty, Communication, and Physiological Stress Responses in Families

• In Event: Advances in Family Communication

Abstract

The goal of this study was to assess how husbands’ and wives’ uncertainty about their finances influences their physiological stress responses (measured through salivary alpha amylase or sAA and cortisol) when engaging in a stressful discussion with each other about their economic uncertainty. The sample consisted of 82 families of married couples with an adolescent child. Wives were more stressed by the conversation than husbands, which was indicative of the wives’ increased cortisol and sAA after the conversation. Wives who experienced an elevated cortisol trajectory used more co-rumination and had low community support. They also had low economic uncertainty and used more communal coping with their husbands. The husbands, however, particularly husbands with high economic uncertainty, exhibited low, unresponsive cortisol patterns. The amount that parents talked about their financial worries to their adolescent was not associated with the adolescent’s mental health, baseline cortisol, or baseline sAA. Nevertheless, husbands’ and wives’ economic uncertainty and the extent to which they co-ruminated about it with one another were negatively associated with their own mental health. These findings held true regardless of ethnicity, the length of time the parents had experienced the financial uncertainty, and household income.

Authors

• Tamara D. Afifi, U of Iowa

• Sharde Davis, U of California - Santa Barbara

• Anne Merrill, U of California - Santa Barbara

• Samantha Coveleski, The Ohio State University

• Amanda Denes, University of Connecticut

• Walid Afifi, University of Iowa