Social Support as a Buffer Between Parental Depressive Symptoms and Parental Engagement

• In Event: Poster Session 14
  In Poster Session: PS 14 Topic - Parenting & Parent-Child Relationships

Abstract

Abstract:
Economically disadvantaged parents often have to manage multiple stressors such as financial needs, childcare, and challenging child behaviors that they can negotiate with their household members or social networks (Fagan et. al., 2016). These stressors may contribute to mothers’ and fathers’ depressive symptoms, which can disrupt parental functioning (Conger et al., 1997; Farkas & Valdes, 2010) and contribute to child maladjustment (Davis et al., 2011). Specifically, levels of parental warmth might decrease. However, there is a social – buffering support model that suggests social support decreases levels of parental distress (Ayala-Nunes et al., 2016). Hence, social support is critical to study in families in order to understand potential buffers between depressive symptoms and parental interactions with their children. Social support is an important factor in disadvantaged families because it might help parents to manage their adversities as they lack the resources to purchase other kinds of support. The quantity of the social support received might help parents cope with their depressive symptoms and maintain warm interactions and communication with their children, yet little research has examined these pathways among low-income mothers and fathers.
Hypotheses
We used secondary data analysis to test the following hypotheses: a) depressive symptoms will be directly associated with less parental warmth; and b) social support will buffer the negative relationship between depressive symptoms and parental warmth. See Figure 1.
Methods
Data are from the Building Strong Families (BSF) multi-site impact study that provided relationship skills education to low-income, unmarried couples transitioning to parenthood (Wood et al., 2012). We included fathers and mothers (N=1891 families) who participated in the last wave of data collection when parenting was measured (child age=36 months).
Depressive Symptoms consisted of mother (=.89) and father (=.92) responses to 12-items regarding depressive symptoms within the last week. Parental warmth included three self-reported questions where mothers (=.77) and fathers (=.95) indicated their parental warmth practices within the last month (e.g. how often child and you had warm close times together?). Items were averaged with higher scores indicating greater warmth. Social support included questions specifically created for BSF. Parents indicated if they could count on other person/people and/or besides mother/father of the child, and how many contacts they had in their social networks. Answers were categorized into three groups: Small (0-6 people), Medium (7-12 people), Large (13+ people) (Devaney, et al., 2008).
Mothers’ and fathers’ reports will be analyzed separately. OLS regression analysis will be performed to test the main effects between depressive symptoms and parental warmth and the moderating role of social support by including an interaction term between depressive symptoms and social support network size. Covariates include: demographics, parental relationship status, income and father residence. Preliminary analyses have begun to address missing data and the OLS assumptions.
Results & Conclusions
The results of this analysis will contribute to understanding the potential buffering effect of social support for mothers and fathers of young children, many of whom are unmarried. This work will contribute to understanding support needs and assets for parents from disadvantaged communities.

Group Authors

Maria Belinda Vasquez, mariavasquez@email.arizona.edu, Norton School of Family & Consumer Sciences, University of Arizona

Melissa A. Barnett, barnettm@arizona.edu, Norton
School of Family & Consumer Sciences, University of Arizona

Melissa A. Curran, macurran@email.arizona.edu, Norton School of Family & Consumer Sciences, University of Arizona

Authors

• Maria Belinda Vasquez, University of Arizona
  Presenting Author

• Melissa A. Barnett, University of Arizona
  Non-Presenting Author

• Melissa Anne Curran, University of Arizona
  Non-Presenting Author