Housing Insecurity and Adolescent Well-Being: The Role of Adverse Parenting

Background and Purpose: Housing insecurity threatens child and youth well-being across multiple domains. Children with exposure to poor quality, unaffordable, overcrowded, or unstable housing display more emotional and behavioral problems over time. Less research examines long-term consequences of housing insecurity in early childhood, or mechanisms linking housing problems with adverse emotional and behavioral outcomes over time. The present study investigated the pathways from housing insecurity to a range of internalizing and externalizing behavioral problems via parenting. Analyses tested the following hypotheses: (1) Housing insecurity directly increases rule-breaking, aggressive, and anxious/depressed adolescent behaviors. (2) Housing insecurity indirectly increases rule-breaking, aggressive, and anxious/depressed adolescent behaviors via both physical and psychological aggression in parenting.

Methods: Data came from the Fragile Families and Child Well-being Study, a large survey that followed nearly 5,000 children born 1998-2000 in 20 large American cities from birth to adolescence. The analytic sample was limited to children living with their biological mothers for the Years 5-15 interviews (N = 2,719). Structural equation modeling with latent variables tested study hypotheses. A measurement model estimated using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) assessed whether scale items were valid indicators of latent variables representing housing insecurity, physical and psychological aggression in parenting, and adolescent behavior subscales. An iterative model-building procedure correlated residual variance terms based on modification index values greater than 20 in a stepwise fashion. A structural model tested direct and indirect effects of housing insecurity on adolescent behavior problems via each type of parenting aggression. Eleven direct paths tested links between latent constructs, and six indirect paths tested whether aggression in parenting mediated the association between housing insecurity and behavior problems. Models were fit using the weighted least square mean and variance adjusted (WLSMV) estimator to account for the ordinal nature of endogenous variables

Results: Results of the CFA (RMSEA = 0.04, CFI = 0.97, SRMR = 0.07) and the structural model (RMSEA = 0.03, CFI = 0.96, SRMR = 0.07) showed excellent fit to the data. Findings partly supported both hypotheses. Housing insecurity was directly associated with both physical (β = 0.07, p < 0.05) and psychological (β = 0.14, p < 0.001) aggression in parenting, as well as with adolescent anxiety/depression. Psychological aggression in parenting mediated the link between housing insecurity and all three adolescent behavior subscales (rule-breaking, aggressive, and anxious/depressed). Thus, housing insecurity when children were approximately five years old was indirectly associated with increased behavior problems at age 15 via adverse parenting

Conclusions and Implications: Results indicate psychological aggression in parenting is an important mechanism linking housing insecurity in childhood with behavior problems in adolescence. Housing insecurity poses an extreme stressor to both children and parents; inability to meet basic needs, high stress, and poor parental coping mechanisms may contribute to adverse psychological parenting behaviors such as yelling, insulting, or threatening children with long term consequences. Services and in-kind supports that address housing insecurity such as rental assistance, housing search assistance, and connections to homeless services may help prevent adverse parenting behaviors that threaten long-term youth development.