Financial stress response profiles and psychosocial functioning in low-income parents.

Abstract

Parenting in the context of poverty is accompanied by heightened stress and heightened stakes. How parents respond to poverty-related stress has important implications for family functioning, but research investigating individual differences in low-income mothers' and fathers' responses to financial stress and their associations with parents' concurrent psychosocial adaptation is lacking. A better understanding of differences in stress responses among low-income parents is required to develop and tailor prevention programs that meet these families' needs. This study applies latent profile analysis (LPA) to identify and describe profiles of financial stress responses (problem solving, emotion regulation, emotion expression, cognitive restructuring, positive thinking, acceptance, distraction, denial, avoidance, wishful thinking, rumination, intrusive thoughts, emotional arousal, physiologic arousal, impulsive action, emotional numbing, cognitive interference, escape, and inaction) and examines associations between profile membership and psychosocial functioning in low-income parents. Five profiles were identified that were distinguished by self-reported voluntary and involuntary financial stress responses: active (32% of sample), low (11%), high (11%), negative cognitive (NC; 17%), and average (29%) responders. Notable differences emerged on measures of life stress, economic hardship, psychopathology, and social support, with individuals in the NC responders profile reporting the most difficulty and members of the active responders profile reporting the greatest adaptation. These findings offer a more nuanced understanding of how mothers and fathers respond to chronic poverty-related stress and have valuable implications for intervention efforts to promote adaptive stress responses and psychosocial functioning in low-income families. (PsycINFO Database Record

Individual Differences in Adolescent Coping: Comparing a Community Sample and a Low-SES Sample to Understand Coping in Context

“…Profiles differed in meaningful and informative ways on measures of gender but not age. Inactive Copers were more likely than members of other coping profiles to be boys; a result that is consistent with previous study findings that adolescent ( Herres 2015 ) and adult ( Perzow et al 2018 ) men endorse less coping behavior than women do. Alternatively, previous research has also found gender differences in adolescent perceived stress, with girls endorsing higher stress than boys ( Hampel and Petermann 2005 ).…”

“…Previous studies have also consistently identified a profile of adolescents characterized by active, approach, or engagement strategies comparable to the Engaged Copers ( Aldridge and Roesch 2008 ; Herres 2015 ; Okafor et al 2016 ; Seiffge-Krenke and Klessinger 2000 ). The profiles identified in the sample of low-SES adolescents were also generally similar to profiles of stress responses identified in a sample of racially diverse, low-SES parents using the RSQ ( Perzow et al 2018 ).…”

“…There may also be gender differences in coping reports that could contribute to the identification of this profile. Research with low-SES parents indicates that these demographic differences are likely— Perzow et al (2018) identified a Low Responders profile who reported low levels of all stress responses, and members of this profile were more likely to be men and to report lower levels of perceived stress.…”

Dispositional Coping Profiles Moderate the Links between Racial Discrimination and Mental Health in Black Americans

“…Person-centered approaches, such as latent profile analysis (LPA; Gibson, 1959) and cluster analysis, have provided critical, new information about coping in samples facing elevated stress. For example, Perzow et al (2018) examined financial stress responses in a sample of lowincome parents and identified five profiles of coping that were differentially related to mental health. Other studies that examined coping profiles in high-stress samples include examinations of young adults at risk for substance abuse (Wong et al, 2013), adults experiencing high levels of work-related stress (Astvik & Melin, 2013), and older chronically ill patients (Stecz, Wrzesinska, Tabala, & Nowakowska-Domagala, 2017).…”

Connecting Caregiver Wages and Distress: Felt Precarity, Parenting, and Child Behavior

“…Numerous studies, both within and outside the family stress model framework, have linked economic hardship, material hardship, or financial strain to caregivers’ mental health, psychological well-being, or emotional distress (Masarik & Conger, 2017; Perzow et al, 2018). Psychological or affective responses including depressive mood (Rigotti et al, 2014), life satisfaction (Bruns & Pilkauskas, 2019), and more general psychological distress including generalized anxiety disorder (Benach et al, 2014) have been linked to conditions of employment such as job insecurity, involuntary job loss, multiple job holding, and temporary or otherwise contingent employment.…”