Economic Stress, Detachment, and Warmth Amongst Fathers and Mothers with Low Income

• In Event: Research on Family Stressors

Abstract

Background: The Family Stress Model (FSM; Conger et al., 1994) delineates the mechanisms by which poverty is associated with poor child outcomes. Despite FSM’ emphasis on mothers and fathers, few studies have included both parents, especially those from racially diverse and socioeconomically disadvantaged contexts. Furthermore, although parent-child emotional connectedness is linked with child development, it has not been readily tested within the context of the FSM. As such, this study applied the FSM to a racially sample of mothers and fathers living with low income to examine processes underlying the links between material hardship and dimensions of parent-child emotional connectedness (i.e., detachment, warmth). By focusing on a multimethod approach and diverse families who participated in a federal demonstration project, this submission aligns with SRCD’s strategic plan goals to advance developmental science; integrate diversity; communicate, exchange, and translate.
Methods: Data were from the Building Strong Families (BSF) project, a large-scale evaluation of healthy marriage programs conducted between 2002 and 2013 in the United States with unmarried heterosexual couples who were living with low income and expecting or recently had a baby. Participants (N = 858) were racially diverse mother-father couples and their preschoolers who were followed across three time points: (1) baseline; (2) 15 months; and (3) 36 months (Table 1). A key independent variable was material hardship, which was a composite variable representing families’ difficulties paying for rent and utilities, housing insecurity, and access to health insurance. Mothers’ and fathers’ depressive symptoms, as measured by the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D; Radloff, 1977), serve as mediators along with both parents’ reports of destructive interparental conflict, which captured verbal aggression harmful to the partner relationship (Cummings & Davies, 2010). Dependent variables were parental warmth, which captured parental affection (Zaslow et al., 1998), and observed parental detachment which was assessed by observing mothers’ and father’s parenting behaviors during the two-bags task, a 10-min semi-structured parent-child interaction task (NICHD Early Child Care Research Network, 1999). Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) within R was employed for mediation analysis, and bootstrapping was used to test indirect effects.
Results: SEM results showed that material hardship was linked with higher levels of maternal and paternal depressive symptoms, which were each, respectively, associated with more mothers’ and fathers’ destructive interparental conflict. Maternal destructive interparental conflict was subsequently linked with greater maternal detachment. Maternal depressive symptoms were linked with lower maternal warmth, and paternal depressive symptoms were linked with lower paternal warmth (Figure 1). Bootstrapping showed indirect effects for all mediators: Maternal and paternal depressive symptoms and maternal and paternal destructive interparental conflict.
Conclusion and Implications: Fathers and mothers with low income share similar and different pathways by which material hardship impacts emotional availability toward their preschool-aged children. Importantly, the finding that material hardship was associated with lower paternal warmth, as mediated by fathers’ depressive symptoms after controlling for maternal effects, suggests that fathers’ mental health problems as potential targets of interventions for family strengthening programs and policies, including federal healthy marriage and responsible fatherhood initiatives.

Authors

• Joyce Yea-Eun Lee, Ohio State University
  Presenting Author

• Shawna J. Lee, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

• Susan Yoon, Ohio State University

• Jaclyn Kirsch, The Ohio State University

• Garrett Pace, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

• Sarah Jane Schoppe-Sullivan, Ohio State University