Cumulative Housing Instability and Adolescent Social Skills: The Mediating Roles of Parenting Aggravation and Adolescent Depression

Introduction:

Social skills for adolescents are key abilities that facilitate peer relationship formation, school adaptation, and the development of social and occupational functioning in adulthood. These skills are not formed solely by individual traits, but are influenced by environmental factors such as housing and family structure. In particular, housing instability is a representative socio-structural risk factor that negatively affects youth development, and it has been reported to influence emotional and behavioral problems through parenting aggravation and adolescent depression. However, existing studies have generally limited the effects of housing instability to specific points in time, and the structural mechanisms through which accumulated experiences shape the development of social skills in adolescence have not been fully identified. This study analyzes the impact of cumulative housing instability from the beginning of life on adolescents' social skills and examines whether parenting aggravation and adolescent depression act as mediating factors.

Methods:

This study utilizes data from Waves 1 through 6 of the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS) with a final analytic sample of 3,009 adolescents. Social skills are measured using modified items from the Adaptive Social Behavior Inventory and the Social Skills Rating System. Housing instability is constructed as a cumulative index from ages 1 to 15, while adolescent depression and parenting aggravation are assessed using the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale and the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, respectively. Using structural equation modeling (SEM), we assess the paths of housing instability affecting social skills through adolescent depression and parenting aggravation, controlling for socio-demographic covariates. In addition, we test the indirect effects using bootstrapping.

Results:

According to the SEM results, cumulative housing instability is found to be significantly associated with increased parenting aggravation (p<.001) and adolescent depression (p<.01). In addition, both parenting aggravation (p<.01) and adolescent depression (p<.001) show a meaningful negative association with social skills among adolescents. The direct effect of cumulative housing instability on adolescents' social skills is not statistically significant, but the mediation analysis reveals that the indirect effects through parenting aggravation (p<.05) and adolescent depression (p<.01) are significant, suggesting the possibility of full mediation. The total effect of cumulative housing instability on adolescents' social skills is confirmed to be negatively significant (p<.05).

Conclusions and Implications:

Our findings clarify the structural mechanism by which accumulated housing instability from early life to adolescence impacts the social skills of adolescents, thereby emphasizing that housing instability is a structural risk factor that goes beyond simple physical deprivation, accumulating over time and operating psychosocially. In particular, by confirming the complete mediation structure through the psychosocial path of parenting aggravation and adolescent depression, it suggests that adolescents’ social skills are associated with a chain reaction of environmental stress and psychological vulnerability. These results indicate that existing approaches focused on recovering psychosocial resources are not sufficient for improving adolescents’ social skills, and that interventions which can structurally alleviate the effects of accumulated housing instability on parenting aggravation and adolescent depression should also be considered.