Research That Matters (January 17 - 20, 2008) |
Methods: Predictor variables were mothers' perceptions of community disorganization and collective efficacy, maternal parenting stress, and mastery. Physical child abuse, psychological abuse, and neglect proxies were drawn from the CTS-PC. The final models controlled for maternal age, income, and martial status. Mplus was used to conduct multiple group analyses testing the structural model for equivalence across race/ ethnic group (White, African American, and Hispanic).
Results: Findings indicated that the model fit equally well for the White, Hispanic, and African American mothers. However, while the fit and misfit measures and chi-square indicated that overall lack of race/ ethnic invariance in the relationships linking collective efficacy, social disorganization, parenting stress and mastery to physical aggression, psychological aggression, and neglect, path coefficients pointed to specific ways that race/ ethnic status influenced mothers' abuse risk. For example, being an older mother was a more significant protective factor for African American mothers; relationship status (not being married) was negatively associated with higher levels of mastery and also with risk for physical child maltreatment, but only for White mothers.
Implications: This study is important given that few studies have adequate sample size to conduct subgroup analyses, particularly examining Hispanic mothers, comparing across a range of variables measuring CAN. Results suggest that once appropriate demographic variables are controlled for there are few overarching significant race/ ethnic differences in terms of how community factors shape individual parenting behaviors. We find little evidence that maternal mastery and perceived parenting stress differ significantly across race/ ethnic groups; or that race/ ethnic status differentially influences risk for maternal CAN. These findings are consistent with other recent studies using the FFCWS focusing on fathers that also point to few race/ ethnic differences in CAN risk except in terms of how race/ ethnicity interacts with demographic variables. In sum, a key implication of this research is that it contributes to a better understanding the relative influence of individual, community and socio-demographic characteristics.