The Influence of Stress and Social Support on Parenting Behavior: Mediational Pathways to Child Development

• In Event: 3-060 - Maternal psychopathology and child development: the role of parenting practices

Integrative Statement

Mothers of young children face unique stressors (e.g., parenting and economic stress), which have been shown to have robustly negative effects on children’s social and cognitive development (Neppl, Senia, & Donnellan, 2016). The theoretical mechanisms that link stressors to children’s wellbeing are often indirect. Drawing from the family stress model, parenting stress can impact children’s outcomes indirectly through its effects on both parental mental health (e.g., anger, depression, anxiety) and parenting practices (e.g., fewer family routines, harsh and inconsistent discipline) (Pereira, Negrão, Soares, & Mesman, 2015). Similar results have been shown for economic stress (Manuel, Martinson, Bledsoe-Mansori & Bellamy, 2012). The effects of stressors on children’s outcomes also depend on contextual factors, which can buffer or protect children from the negative effects of stress. Efforts to understand the contextual factors which may buffer children from the negative effects of stressors on parenting and, more distally, child wellbeing have shown that social support is an important protective factor (Jackson, Brooks-Gunn, Huang, & Glassman, 2000; Kang, 2013). Social support may be particularly critical for low-income families with young children who undoubtedly face higher levels of economic stress and may experience specific types of parenting stress associated with parenting very young children (Barnett, 2008).
This study uses data from Baby FACES 2009, a longitudinal descriptive study of children and families enrolled in Early Head Start (EHS) programs. Grounded in Ecological Systems Theory, the family stress model and the stress buffering model, this longitudinal study puts forth the following research questions: (1) What types of social supports and stressors do mothers experience on a regular basis? Do mothers desire more support? Is support a primary topic of EHS home visits?; (2) Are different types of maternal stress and social support associated with toddlers’ language development, social competence, and behavior problems? Are the associations between types of maternal stress and child outcomes mediated by mothers’ parenting quality (i.e., observed reciprocity and intrusiveness)?; and (3) Does social support moderate the associations between mothers’ stress and parenting quality?
The current study uses data from the 1-year-old cohort only because social support data was not collected from the newborn cohort at age 1. Specifically, we use data from the 1-year parent interview, videotaped mother-child interactions at 2 years, staff-child reports and direct child assessments administered to children at the final wave of data collection (age 3). Path analyses are forthcoming; preliminary results suggest that parents have high levels of support both for practical day-to-day tasks necessary to keep a household running and for emotional support (unweighted mean = 30.9). Still, over 50% of parents hope to have more social support in the next five years, though only 6% listed it as part of their family partnership agreement with EHS. Finally, 14% of home visitors reported providing emotional support to the parents during a home visit. However, parents are relatively uninvolved in community organizations, with only 20% reporting involvement in any community groups (including EHS parent groups). This suggests an opportunity to connect parents to their community supports.

Authors

• Catherine Kuhns, University of Maryland
  Presenting Author

• Natasha Cabrera, University of Maryland
  Non-Presenting Author