Early Head Start Families’ Experiences With Stress: Understanding Variations Within a High‐risk, Low‐income Sample

Abstract

The federal Early Head Start program provides a relevant context to examine families' experiences with stress since participants qualify on the basis of poverty and risk. Building on previous research that has shown variations in demographic and economic risks even among qualifying families, we examined possible variations in families' perceptions of stress. Family, parent, and child data were collected to measure stressors and risk across a variety of domains in families' everyday lives, primarily from self-report measures, but also including assay results from child cortisol samples. A cluster analysis was employed to examine potential differences among groups of Early Head Start families. Results showed that there were three distinct subgroups of families, with some families perceiving that they experienced very high levels of stress while others perceived much lower levels of stress despite also experiencing poverty and heightened risk. These findings have important implications in that they provide an initial step toward distinguishing differences in low-income families' experiences with stress, thereby informing interventions focused on promoting responsive caregiving as a possible mechanism to buffer the effects of family and social stressors on young children.

Blunted cortisol stress reactivity in low–income children relates to lower memory function

“…First, we followed Farah's (2017) recommendations on exploring effects of SES in a way that increases comparability across studies by reporting the effects of each SES indicator and their composite score, but prioritizing one indicator in our results. The prioritized indicator was income, because income is the most variable SES indicator that may be more closely associated with different levels of family stress including financial strain (Hustedt et al, 2017;Raver et al, 2015) and has been shown to correlate with children's stress reactivity (Badanes et al, 2011;Kraft & Luecken, 2009; but see Hostinar et al, 2015aHostinar et al, , 2015b. Although the sample's income distribution included 17% of families living below the poverty threshold, which mirrors population statistics for Berlin, parental education and occupational status suggested that higher SES was overrepresented.…”

“…In samples of more moderately varying SES, associations with child cognition are still found (Obradović, Portilla, & Ballard, 2016), but income and education are not as highly correlated and may have diverging associations with child outcomes (Farah et al, 2008;Noble et al, 2015). Those samples may experience different levels of stress related to financial strain (Hustedt et al, 2017;Raver et al, 2015) or other factors correlated with SES (Bradley & Corwyn, 2002), despite being relatively well-educated in socially recognized occupations. Furthermore, income is the most variable SES indicator (Duncan, Ziol-Guest, & Kalil, 2010) and most commonly targeted by policy programs.…”

“…While such samples are the most desirable, they are not always obtainable by researchers. In contrast, in severely impoverished samples, it may be more informative to use indicators of, say, stress perception, which may mark between-person differences more than income and education (Hustedt et al, 2017). In samples of more moderately varying SES, associations with child cognition are still found (Obradović, Portilla, & Ballard, 2016), but income and education are not as highly correlated and may have diverging associations with child outcomes (Farah et al, 2008;Noble et al, 2015).…”

“…Importantly, Paper I suggests that income gains versus losses matter more to poor children's cognitive performance in later childhood than the previous income level alone. Indeed, income variability in low-income samples is a potent stressor for parents (Hustedt et al, 2017).…”

“…Theoretical and empirical foundations in contrast to children over 9 years (LeMoult, Ordaz, Kircanski, Singh, & Gotlib, 2015;Maldonado et al, 2008;Wolf, Nicholls, & Chen, 2008). Nonetheless, even among high-risk, low-income families, stress perception varies considerably, such that they can be clustered into subgroups of high, intermediate, and low stress perception separated by up to 2 SDs (Hustedt, Vu, Bargreen, Hallam, & Han, 2017). Third, perceiving stress initiates a physiological cascade in the body, which is referred to as the stress response.…”