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Poster #102 - Parental Racial Worries, Youth Mental Health, and the Moderating Role of Parents' Racial Socialization Competency

Sat, March 25, 11:30am to 12:15pm, Salt Palace Convention Center, Floor: 1, Hall A-B

Abstract

Parents of color often worry about the toxic developmental consequences of racial discrimination on their children. While parental worry about their children is broadly associated with youth internalizing symptoms, a recent study found that parental worries specifically about their children being racially profiled exacerbated adolescents’ psychosocial problems. Parents’ racial socialization (RS) competency—or the confidence, skills, and stress associated with communicating messages about race and racism—may modulate parents’ expression of their racial worries and promote improved mental health outcomes in their children. This study aims to assess whether parental RS competency modifies the association between parental racial worries and youth internalizing and externalizing problems.
Conducted in 2020, this study surveyed 804 ethno-racially diverse caregivers of 10-to-18-year-old adolescents. Overall, 57.3% of caregivers were women (n=461), with a mean age of 44.4 (SD=9.16). Approximately a quarter of the sample was either Black (25.3%, n=203), Asian (24.1%, n=194), White (24.0%, n=193), or Latinx (23.4%, n=188). The remaining caregivers (3.23%; n=26) were multiracial. Caregivers completed self-report measures, including the Parental Worries about Racial Profiling scale, the Racial Socialization Competency Scale which measures RS confidence, skills, and stress, and the Brief Problem Monitor measure of youth internalizing and externalizing problems. Using multiple linear regression models, we estimated the main effect of parental racial worries, the main effect of parental RS competency, and the interaction between parental racial worries and RS competency when predicting youth internalizing and externalizing problems. Models controlled for caregiver and youth gender and age, caregiver education, household income, and neighborhood safety. Significant interactions were probed by conducting simple slope analyses at mean levels and one standard deviation above and below the mean for RS competency.
As expected, higher parental racial worries predicted higher levels of youth internalizing (β=0.436; p<.001) and externalizing problems (β=0.401; p<.001). In models assessing associations with parental RS competency, higher RS skills and confidence and lower RS stress predicted lower levels of youth internalizing and externalizing problems. Further, RS stress significantly moderated the effect of parental racial worries on youth internalizing (β=0.318; p<.001) and externalizing problems (β=0.164; p<.001). For example, in the context of high levels of parental RS stress, there was a strong positive association between parental racial worries and youth internalizing problems (at 1 SD above mean RS stress, b=1.28; 95% CI [1.00, 1.55]; Figure 1). The moderation effect was weaker—though still significant—at the mean level of RS stress (b=0.884; 95% CI [0.671, 1.10]) and at 1 SD below the mean (b=0.493; 95% CI [0.193, 0.792]). There was no evidence that RS confidence or RS skills moderated the effects of parental racial worries on youth internalizing or externalizing problems. In future research, we will stratify analyses to assess for variability in associations by caregivers’ race/ethnicity.
Findings highlight the importance of targeting caregivers’ RS-related stress levels. Interventions that seek to improve caregivers’ RS competency may hold potential to reduce the impact of parental racial worries on youth mental health.

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