A Gap within the Gap in Material Hardship? Cumulative Effects on Parenting Stress

Background

Parenting stress negatively impacts family health and wellbeing. Among others, the Family Stress Model suggests negative events, low income, and high assets to debt affect parenting. The model most often does not account for cumulative experiences of economic hardship (Masarik and Conger, 2017). Material hardship (MH) is a multidimensional construct measuring inability to meet specific needs (e.g., food, housing) and has been found to be more prevalent than income poverty (Rodems and Shaefer, 2020). Emerging research suggests duration (cumulative) and timing (recency) of MH impact wellbeing (Thomas, 2023), yet most interventions assess material hardship at present or within a circumscribed time period, e.g., past year. Research on cumulative hardship in the form of income poverty illuminated large gaps within gaps in longitudinal educational outcomes (Michelmore and Dynarski; 2017). We extend this gap-within-a-gap framework to the Family Stress Model to assess differences between current and cumulative MH on parenting stress of adolescents.

Method

The current longitudinal study used 6 waves of data from The Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS) with a focus on parenting stress at Wave 6. The FFCWS is a birth-cohort study of 5,000 children and families (e.g., low-income and unmarried parents) born in large U.S. cities between 1998 and 2000 (https://ffcws.princeton.edu/about). We measured parenting stress through four items (two dimensions: role-strain, perceptions of child) and averaged scores (range: 0-4). MH was measured with five items (food, housing, utilities, medical, bills). Cross-sectional MH was calculated on Wave 6 as one or more of the hardship indicators; cumulative MH (CMH) was calculated as MH experienced at any given wave and summed across the 5 waves of the survey. We controlled for maternal poverty, education, race/ethnicity, immigration, age, and child gender. We estimated a series of OLS regressions predicting parenting stress at Wave 6.

Results

Overall parenting stress was low-moderate (M = 2.05) and 8.9% of participants experiencing cross-sectional MH at wave 6. CMH varied considerably with 30% never experiencing hardship, 20% of the sample with one wave of CH, and 50% with two or more waves in MH. The gap in parenting stress was .28; no MH (M = 2.02) and current MH (2.31; p < .01). In examining the CMH gap, we found the CMH gap was .11 at 1 and increased linearly to .41 at CMH 5 (p < .01).

Conclusion

This study provides new insights into the current understanding of how MH shapes families and children. Specifically, we find limiting analyses to current hardship masks the full scale of MH’s influence. To fully capture the impact of MH, we emphasize a need to understand MH duration (i.e., cumulative effects). We find the threshold of difference to be at three to four waves, where the magnitude of MH influence on parenting stress exceeds well beyond recent/current measures. Broader adoption of cumulative measures of MH may be a cost-effective and accurate way to identify families at heightened risk for adverse conditions, and adjust policies and interventions to better address, not only current, but historic disadvantage.