Early Parenthood in a Community Context: Neighborhood Conditions, Race/Ethnicity, and Parenting Stress

Background and Purpose: Early parenthood presents challenges as parents adapt to their new role in caring for their infants. Parenting stress has been associated with negative outcomes in the parent, including poor parental health and problematic parenting practices, and it affects child functioning, child disruptive behaviors, and child maltreatment (Deater-Deckard, 2004). Generally, research has highlighted the role of intrapersonal and family characteristics on stress. Less attention has been paid to the potential influence of the community context and racial/ethnic differences in parental experiences in the earliest years of raising a child. This study attempts to close this gap. It examines the impact of neighborhood-level social disorder and social cohesion, as well as race/ethnicity, on parenting stress from the birth of the child to three years of age in a longitudinal and representative sample of new parents in large U.S. cities. This study tests the interaction between neighborhood conditions and race/ethnicity and explores how changes in parents' status affect stress levels. To build capacity at the community level, policy makers need information on factors that can help reduce social stressors in the family.

Methods: Birth to 3-Year Core Surveys and the 3-Year In-Home Module from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study were used (n=3,288). Maternal stress, based on a well-validated scale, was the primary dependent variable. Primary independent variables were neighborhood-level social disorder and social cohesion. Maternal race/ethnicity, age, education, employment, social support, relationship status, health, attendance at religious services, child's health, and child's temperament were covariates. We constructed variables to capture longitudinal changes in mother's characteristics and child's health. Bivariate analyses and multiple regression analyses were conducted to examine the relationship between independent variables, covariates, change variables, and parenting stress. The moderating effect of race/ethnicity was tested (neighborhood conditions x race/ethnicity).

Results: Bivariate analyses show that (1) parental stress is significantly greater in neighborhoods with higher levels of social disorder and lower levels of social cohesion, and (2) non-Hispanic Blacks and Hispanics show higher levels of parenting stress than non-Hispanic Whites. Multiple regression analysis of independent variables and covariates on parental stress confirmed the bivariate relationships between neighborhood conditions and stress. However, controlling for covariates, being non-Hispanic Black and Hispanic (reference=Non-Hispanic Whites) significantly decreases parenting stress. Further analysis will (1) explore the conditions that reduce stress in minority populations, (2) examine the influence of changes in parental status on stress, and (3) assess the interaction between neighborhood conditions and race-ethnicity.

Conclusions and Implications: Preliminarily, we conclude that the neighborhood context is a significant predictor of parenting stress and that new minority parents experience less stress when controlling for other factors. As we gain insight into the role of the covariates in parenting stress, we will have a better understanding of the processes of early parenthood, which can help inform the design of interventions to build more resourceful families and communities for the betterment of parents and children.