Cumulative Adversity Profiles Among Youth Experiencing Housing and Parental Care Instability

Background/Purpose:  This study builds on growing recognition of the harmful impacts of instability in youths’ developmental ecologies on their health and psychosocial functioning (Sandstrom & Huerta, 2013). We draw upon cumulative adversity (Hatch, 2005) and stress proliferation (Pearlin et al. 2005) theorizing to examine  risk and protective resource profiles of general population youth with no, single form, or double form current  instability vis-à-vis housing and parental care. Extending cumulative adversity research, we conceptually integrate work on social determinants, adverse childhood experiences, and housing and parental care instability as these merge to form impediments to healthy psychosocial functioning. We hypothesize that these experiences of instability will be associated with a paucity of other family and school based supports as well as poorer functioning across multiple forms of psychosocial health.

Methods: Data derive from the 2016 sample (n=27,087) of 8th, 10th, and 12th grade students in the Washington State Healthy Youth Survey (HYS), with demographic composition representative of the state.

Youth were distinguished as experiencing/not experiencing housing and parental care instability in the past month: neither instability, one form, or both forms. Outcome variables were constructed along individual, family, and school domains, using well-established validated measures from national surveys. The Individual domain contains scales and indices assessing quality of life (5 items), self-regulation skills (4 items), mental health (internalizing and suicidality, 6 items), cumulative victimization (maltreatment, peer-victimization, and dating violence, 11 items), and grades. Family domain outcomes include two family-domain scales: family management (8 items) and family opportunities (3 items). School domain outcomes include three school-domain scales: school commitment (7 items), prosocial involvement (5 items), and prosocial reinforcement (4 items).  

Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) tests assessed mean level differences between instability groups across all outcome measures, controlling for the effects of gender and race/ethnicity. Bonferroni posthoc pairwise tests assessed statistically significant differences between each instability group across the psychosocial functioning measures.    

 

Results: Demographically, both single and double instability youth were more represented by males, sexual minorities, and youth of color, compared to neither instability youth, particularly marked for those with double instability. Analyses established significant ANCOVA results for each outcome measures with nearly each test of instability group contrast also achieving significance. These findings indicate stepped effect trends consistent with cumulative adversity theorizing across multi-level domains of youth health, functioning and resources. 

 

Conclusions and Implications: Our findings illuminate a broad band of risks to healthy development among school-based youth experiencing fundamental forms of instability.  Specifically, with increased instability, instances of victimization are elevated, grades, self-regulation capabilities and school engagement worsen, experiences of problematic psychological health increase, and family and peer relationships become more limited and strained. These dimensions of cumulative adversity and health erosion operate in tandem with poverty and other social marginalities. The paper discusses theorized mechanisms through which cumulative adversity conveys effects as well as implications for social work prevention and resilience-fostering strategies in schools and other youth-serving settings.