Publication year
2019
Citation Title
Making meaning from money: Subjective social status and young children's behavior problems.
Journal Name
Journal of Family Psychology
Journal Volume
33
Issue Number
2
Page Numbers
240-245
DOI
10.1037/fam0000487
Summary
Understanding the impact of the family's socioeconomic status on child behavior has important implications for minimizing problem behavior. This study investigated how parents’ reports of subjective social status (how parents rated their own social status) and objective indicators of socioeconomic status (e.g., employment) affected parental mental health and children's behavioral problems. The findings indicated that parental stress was related to their employment status and education levels. In addition, higher stress in parents was associated with more behavior problems in children.
Key Findings
Parents who reported lower social status tended to experience higher depression, which in turn, was related to more externalizing problems (e.g., hyperactivity) in children.
Parents who experienced higher parenting stress tended to have lower education levels and were not currently employed, which was related to more externalizing, internalizing (e.g., anxiety), and dysregulation problems (e.g., sensory sensitivity) in children.
Subjective social status was associated with children's externalizing problems, but not with dysregulation or internalizing problems.
Implications for Military Professionals
Facilitate support groups for parents that focus on managing financial stress
Attend trainings about the effects of parental depression on youth behaviors to enhance their ability to provide support to at-risk families
Implications for Program Leaders
Provide education to parents on the effects of parental stress on youth behavior
Offer educational programming to youth that focus on strategies for peer conflict resolution
Implications for Policy Makers
Promote the development of programs that help youth with problem behavior management
Support research that investigates effective strategies to manage parental depression and stress
Methods
Families were recruited from seven different social service programs. Some of the families were recruited from three different public hospitals that were located in the same vicinity as the social services programs.
Subjective social status of families was measured using the MacArthur Scale of Subjective Social Status. Objective indicators of socioeconomic status were measured using parent education level, current employment status, and an income-to-needs ratio.
Parental depression was measured using the Center for Epidemiological Studies-Depression (CES-D). The Dysfunctional Interaction subscale of the Parenting Stress Index (PSI) was used to measure parenting stress. The Brief Infant Toddler Social Emotional Assessment (BITSEA) was used to measure child behavior problems.
Participants
This study included 173 parents who had children between zero to three years old (M=24 months, SD=10 months). The average age of parents was 31 years old (SD=7 years).
Mothers made up 93% of participants, fathers made up 6% and grandparents made up 1%. Fifty-six percent of the sample was female.
Latino families comprised 79% of the participants, while 13% were Black, 6% were multiracial, and 2% were Asian American.
Limitations
This study did not include parenting behaviors other than stress and depression, so the results may have excluded important parental factors that influence problematic child behavior.
The study was cross-sectional which limited the ability to examine the causal relationship between parental social status and child behavior.
The sample only included families with children ages zero to three years which restricts generalizability of findings to families with children above the age of three years old.
Avenues for Future Research
Investigate how subjective social status affects child behavior in families with diverse socioeconomic statuses
Examine the timeframes for when children understand the meaning of their own socioeconomic status and how it affects their actions and behaviors
Explore how parental depression and stress can affect the behaviors of youth throughout adolescence
Focus
Civilian
Target Population
Population Focus
Abstract
While early exposure to poverty has been linked to decrements in children’s behavior through underlying pathways of parenting stress and depression, extant research has typically relied on the use of objective measures of socioeconomic status (SES) to test these associations. However, children’s development may be shaped by the ways that parents perceive social class, which may operate independently and differentially from objective SES. Using structural equation modeling, the present study explores relationships between parents’ ratings of subjective social status (SSS), objective indicators of SES (income-to-needs ratio, education, employment status), and young children’s (ages 0 –3) behavior problems among 173 low-income families living in an urban area in the northeast United States. In addition, we consider whether parents’ stress and depression underlie these associations. Results demonstrate negative relationships from both objective SES and SSS to parents’ well-being. Moreover, in keeping with the Family Stress Model, we find that both SES and SSS are related to children’s adjustment via parents’ stress and depression; parents who have lower levels of education, are not employed, and who report lower SSS also report higher levels of stress, which in turn is related to higher levels of children’s behavior problems. To our knowledge, this is the first study to test assumptions of the Family Stress Model using both subjective and objective indicators of social status, and one of few studies exploring linkages between parents’ perceptions of SSS and children’s behavior problems.
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