Single Mothers in Their Communities: The Mediating Role of Parenting Stress from Neighborhood Social Cohesion and Physical Abuse

Background and Purpose: The highest risk for child maltreatment occurs in the early years.  Physical child abuse is a form of child maltreatment that can have detrimental effects on the child’s health and wellbeing throughout the life course.   Identifying key factors related to this problem is essential for informing interventions.  Collective efficacy includes social cohesion (mutual trust among neighbors) and social control (willingness to intervene for the common good). Social cohesion may decrease child abuse because of the ability to count on one’s neighbors for support, while social control may decrease it because of a fear of being reported to child protective services. This study investigates whether social cohesion and social control influence physical child abuse, and whether these relationships are mediated by parental stress. 

Methods:  A cross-sectional subsample of 1523 single, non-cohabitating mothers from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing (FFCW) 3 year wave was used to examine the relationships between social cohesion, social control, parental stress and physical child abuse.  FFCW is a longitudinal study that follows a cohort of predominantly unmarried parents to examine their ‘parental capabilities, relationship characteristics, and family wellbeing’.  A principle components analysis suggested the collective efficacy items loaded on 2 separate factors, therefore social control and social cohesion were composed as separate factors.  Structural equation modeling was used to test separate mediation models with the predictors, mediator, and dependent variables.  The first model tested whether social cohesion predicted physical child abuse and whether this relationship was mediated by parental stress.  The second model examined whether social control predicted physical child abuse and whether this relationship was mediated by parental stress. Models were assessed based on the following fit indices: c², RMSEA, NFI, SRMR, GFI, and AGFI.

Results: The first mediation model investigating whether parental stress mediates the relationship between social cohesion and physical child abuse was significant, but weak.  Model fit indices suggest acceptable model fit (: Χ²₇₄ = 853.650, (p < .001), RMSEA = 0.0832, NFI = 0.874, SRMR = 0.0485, GFI= 0.925, and AGFI =0.893). The second model testing whether parental stress mediates the relationship between social control and physical child abuse was also significant but weak.  Model fit indices suggest acceptable model fit (: Χ²₇₄ = 513.914, (p < .001), RMSEA = 0.0625, NFI = 0.917, SRMR = 0.0425, GFI= 0.953, and AGFI =0.934.) 

Conclusions and Implications: The findings suggest neighborhood social cohesion and social control are associated with lower levels of physical abuse, and these relationships were explained by the mediating pathway of decreased parenting stress.  However, these relationships were relatively weak.  While collective efficacy has been found to predict lower rates of violence in previous research, the effect of such community factors may not exert the same influence among single, non-cohabitating mothers.  These mothers may experience significant material and economic hardship, and the effects of a supportive community may not be able to reduce the parental stress they experience.