Relationships Among Parents' Economic Stress, Parenting, and Young Children's Behavior Problems

    Authors

    J. Puff;K. Renk

    Comments

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    Abbreviated Journal Title

    Child Psychiat. Hum. Dev.

    Keywords

    Economy; Parenting stress; Young children; Behavior problems; HARDSHIP; EXPERIENCES; SPILLOVER; FAMILIES; MOTHERS; IMPACT; BOYS; Psychology, Developmental; Pediatrics; Psychiatry

    Abstract

    In a time of economic recession, identifying how economic stress may be related to parenting stress, to the parenting behaviors used by mothers and fathers, and to young children's behavior problems may provide insight into interventions that may best assist families through their own economic crises. As part of this study, 124 culturally diverse parents with young children who ranged in age from 2- to 6-years rated their own economic, life, and parenting stress; their parenting behaviors; and their young children's behavior problems. Hierarchical regression analyses suggested that negative economic events and parenting stress provide unique incremental variance in predicting young children's internalizing problems, whereas life stress and parenting stress provide unique incremental variance in predicting young children's externalizing problems. With closer examination, parenting stress fully mediated the relationship between parents' financial cutbacks and young children's internalizing problems and the relationship between parents' negative economic events and young children's externalizing problems. These findings suggested that these variables are important to examine collectively.

    Journal Title

    Child Psychiatry & Human Development

    Volume

    45

    Issue/Number

    6

    Publication Date

    1-1-2014

    Document Type

    Article

    Language

    English

    First Page

    712

    Last Page

    727

    WOS Identifier

    WOS:000345140400008

    ISSN

    0009-398X

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