It Takes a Village: Family Support Buffers Longitudinal Risk of Chinese American Mothers’ Parenting Stress

• In Event: Families as Systems and Subsystems

Abstract

Chinese immigrants are a rapidly growing group and predicted to be the largest U.S. immigrant group by 2055 (Pew Research Center, 2021). Immigrant mothers may experience high levels of stress because of the child-rearing burden while navigating the host culture demands. The demand-resources model of stress posits that parenting tasks and expectations of mothers that exceed their resources are likely to tax their psychological well-being (Koeske & Koeske, 1990; Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). However, support from family can serve as resources for acculturation and emotional support that can alleviate the negative impact of parenting stress on mothers (Li et al., 2014). Moreover, different sources of family support (e.g., spouse and non-spouse family members such as parents and in-laws) might jointly affect mothers’ well-being in the face of parenting stress; yet, this effect is less studied, especially over time. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to examine whether support from spouse and other family members jointly buffer against the long-term negative impact of parenting stress on Chinese immigrant mothers’ life satisfaction.
Chinese immigrant mothers (Mage=37.9 years, SD=4.7 years) reported on their parenting stress, perceived support to their role as a parent, life satisfaction, and covariates (i.e., marital satisfaction and acculturation level) at two timepoints across six months (N=250 at Time 1, N=180 at Time 2). We created a three-way interaction term (stress x spouse support x other-family support) to investigate the moderating effect of support variables using Mplus. Overall, the proposed model exhibited excellent model fit (CFI=1.00, TLI=1.00, RSMEA=.00, SRMR=.00). The three-way interaction was significant (B=-1.32, SE=0.62, p=.03). Follow-up simple slope analyses showed that after controlling for the covariates, parenting stress was only longitudinally associated with decreased maternal life satisfaction when support from both spouse and other family members were low (B=-1.19, SE =0.54, p=.03). When high levels of support were provided by only spouse (B=0.22, SE=.82, p=.79), only other family members (B=2.76, SE=1.74, p=.11), or both (B=-1.11, SE=1.29, p=.39), parenting stress was not linked to mothers’ lower satisfaction with life at Time 2.

Our results demonstrated that parenting stress leads to lower levels of life satisfaction over time, but only when mothers receive low levels of support from spouse and other family members. In Chinese culture, mothers are seen as the primary caregiver and are expected to manage most child-rearing chores (Li & Lamb, 2015). This family responsibility imposed on mothers might result in heightened parenting stress. Our findings highlight the complementary protective effects of spouse support and non-spouse family members' support in alleviating parenting stress of mothers and its adverse impact on lower mothers’ life satisfaction., Notably, findings show that mothers remain resilient when support from some family members is limited. In this sense, our findings shed light to a flexible approach to facilitate resilience of immigrant caregivers in the face of parenting stress. The findings inform family-based intervention programs to expand their potential targeting participants to all family members – including mothers, fathers, in-laws, and other extended family members – to enhance child-rearing support provided to immigrant mothers.

Authors

• Yao Sun, University of Maryland - Baltimore County
  Presenting Author

• Charissa S. L. Cheah, University of Maryland - Baltimore County

• Hatice Gursoy, University of Maryland - Baltimore County

• Li-Wen Wu, University of Maryland - Baltimore County