An Exploratory Study of African-American Parent-Child Coping Strategies

Background and Purpose: Hurricanes can cause serious devastation in people's lives leaving children and adults to cope with the aftermath. On August 29, 2005 Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast region resulting in unprecedented destruction affecting thousands of residents including a sizable number of African Americans. Understanding the coping responses of African American children and their parents is important for developing culturally relevant and developmentally specific interventions post-hurricane. Research on coping strategies and the relational coping processes of children and their parents is scarce especially with African Americans post-disaster. The purpose of this exploratory study was to examine the main coping strategies of an African American sample of children (ages 7 to 12) and parents in New Orleans post Hurricane Katrina, and to examine the relational coping strategies of children and their parents.

Methods: Secondary data for this exploratory qualitative study were obtained from semi-structured interviews with 42 African American children and their parents (N =35) who were interviewed individually about their coping efforts post Hurricane Katrina. Participants were part of a larger school-based experimental treatment study with children (ages 7-12). Interviews occurred during the course of the intervention (February 15, 2006 to May 1, 2006). Parents were asked three open-ended questions: 1) What has been the most stressful thing for you?; 2) Were there other stressful things?; and 3) What has helped you cope thus far? Children's coping strategies were gathered from two open-ended questions: 1) “What has helped you cope thus far?; and 2) “Who do you have that you can talk with about your thoughts and feelings about what happened?” A theoretically derived coding system was created to conduct a content analysis of the open-ended coping responses. Coping categories included parent-child coping or coping assistance, active coping, adaptive coping, and avoidant coping. Within each category subtypes of coping were identified based on coping literature. Inter-rater reliability was 87% for parent responses and 95% for child responses. Consensus on all coping responses was reached.

Results: Parents reported that active coping strategies helped them the most (57%) followed by adaptive coping (29%), parent-child coping (16%), and avoidance coping (9%) strategies. Children reported that assistance from others (parents and other family members) helped them cope (47%), followed by adaptive coping (31%) active coping (22%) and avoidant coping (17%) strategies. The most frequent subtype of coping reported by children was distraction (play). Parents reported seeking meaning and understanding (religious or spiritual guidance) the most.

Conclusions: The subtypes of coping responses such as emotionally processing with family and kinship members, distraction (play), seeking meaning and understanding (religious or spiritual guidance) and seeking social support from ecological network members has implications for developing strengths-based, culturally relevant and developmentally specific post-disaster policies and interventions for African American children and their parents. Further research is needed to assess frequency and perceived helpfulness of coping strategies, examine changes in coping over time, include a larger sample to explore gender, developmental and within group cultural differences, and to include a comparison group to study cultural coping responses.