Socioeconomic status and parenting in ethnic minority families: Testing a minority family stress model.

Abstract

According to the family stress model (Conger & Donnellan, 2007), low socioeconomic status (SES) predicts less-than-optimal parenting through family stress. Minority families generally come from lower SES backgrounds than majority families, and may experience additional stressors associated with their minority status, such as acculturation stress. The primary goal of this study was to test a minority family stress model with a general family stress pathway, as well as a pathway specific to ethnic minority families. The sample consisted of 107 Turkish-Dutch mothers and their 5- to 6-year-old children, and positive parenting was observed during a 7-min problem-solving task. In addition, mothers reported their daily hassles, psychological distress, and acculturation stress. The relation between SES and positive parenting was partially mediated by both general maternal psychological stress and maternal acculturation stress. Our study contributes to the argument that stressors specific to minority status should be considered in addition to more general demographic and family stressors in understanding parenting behavior in ethnic minority families.

Maternal Health Status and Parenting Stress in Low-Income, Ethnic-Minority Mothers of Children with Conduct Disorder Problems: the Role of Daily Parenting Hassles

“…Problems in these three areas are associated with poor parental functioning, which in turn is linked to poor child and family outcomes. In support of this model, past research has found that maternal depression, difficult child temperament, child behavior problems, low social support, and limited financial resources are linked to high levels of parenting stress and harsh parenting practices [2–6,8,12,15]. Relatively less research has examined how maternal physical health influences parenting stress, especially in contexts where mothers are struggling to raise high-risk children with limited financial and social resources.…”

“…Mothers of low-socioeconomic status (SES) and who are ethnically or racially diverse are particularly vulnerable to poor physical and mental health [21–23] and high parenting stress [4–6]. This may be due to structural disadvantages such as limited access to quality health care and low social and financial support [2,4,10].…”

“…Parenting hassles refer to the day-to-day parenting tasks that over time may cumulatively cause irritation, frustration, stress, or annoyance in parents[6]. Parenting hassles differ from parenting stress in that the former focuses on stress that results from performing everyday parenting activities (e.g., household tasks) whereas parenting stress refers to feelings of distress that stem from poor parental self-competence and dysfunctional parent-child relationships [24,25].…”

“…While the process of parenting can be stressful for many parents, research suggests that ethnic-minority parents who are of lower socioeconomic status (SES) and who care for children with behavior problems are particularly vulnerable to feelings of parenting stress [3–6]. Minimal research has examined protective and risk factors associated with parenting stress in this vulnerable population of parents.…”

Child Vocabulary, Maternal Behavior, and Inhibitory Control Development Among Spanish-Speaking Children

“…Acculturation stress may be particularly salient in the development of self-regulation skills for first-generation immigrant families living in low-income households (Li-Grining, 2012). Given that all of the mothers in our sample were low income and the majority were first-generation immigrants and spoke Spanish only, it is likely that they faced some level of discrimination and acculturation stress (Emmen et al, 2013; Schwartz et al, 2010). However, at this stage of the study, we did not include measurement of such stress, and we were therefore unable to examine how it impacted parenting and child outcomes presented here.…”