Parenting adults who become homeless: Variations in stress and social support.

Abstract

This article focuses on the stressors of parenting an adult child who experiences homelessness. Parents whose adult children become homeless may provide support to this child, but they may also subsequently experience stress and require social support themselves. Findings from this study support the hypothesis that parents who spend more time or money helping their homeless adult offspring experience higher levels of stress. Results also show higher levels of stress among parents who helped with activities of daily living and among parents who worked to prevent harm involving their adult homeless offspring. Among 37 respondents, a majority of whom were African American mothers parenting homeless sons, parents who engaged in activities to prevent harm and parents who experienced stress from harm prevention received more extensive social support. Health and social service providers should recognize and respond to the financial, emotional, and temporal burdens of parenting an adult who becomes homeless. Service providers can both support people who become homeless and reinforce larger family systems, particularly in circumstances that involve more extensive parental support or more harmful situations.

Families Help Homeless and Disabled Relatives Providing Support is More Stressful with “Double Troubles”

“…Individual interviews include demographic questions, indicators of stress and social support, and measures of functional limitations or disabilities. We adapted the questionnaire from previous social research (Polgar, North, and Pollio 2009;Polgar, Pollio, and North 2006). Questions provide quantitative data to calculate several indices of stress and social support, each empirically based on experiences with a homeless relative during the 30 days prior to the interview.…”

The Impact of Shelter Environment, Parental Communication, and Supervision on Depression Outcomes Among an Urban Sample of Adolescent First-Time Shelter Users in New York City

“…While positive parenting can help children manage their emotions and self-regulate (Gewirtz et al, 2009; Hackman, Farah, & Meaney, 2010; Herbers et al, 2011; Shonkoff, 2011), circumstances of homelessness may impose unique challenges (financial, emotional, and physical) that compromise the quality of parenting and parent–child relationships (Bassuk, 1993, Freidman, 2005; Howard et al, 2009; Kotchick, Dorsey, & Heller, 2005; Polgar, North, & Pollio, 2009; Torquati, 2002). Studies have shown that the stress of homelessness negatively influences parent’s ability to provide consistent, responsive, and supportive parenting (Roosa, Tein, Groppenbacher, Michaels, & Dumka, 1993; Torquati, 2002).…”

Unmet Physical and Mental Healthcare Needs Among Stimulant-using Gay and Bisexual Homeless Men

“…Social networks have been studied among homeless men on skid row (Green, Tucker, Golinelli, & Wenzel, 2013) and parenting an adult child who becomes homeless (Polgar, North, & Pollio, 2009) to name a few. Among homeless populations, perceptions of social support may be moderately high (Hwang et al, 2009).…”