Ethnic Variation in Poverty and Parenting Stress

Abstract

Poverty is a critical issue facing many families in the USA, many of whom belong to racial and ethnic minority groups. Our chapter focuses on the impact of poverty on parenting stress in an effort to elucidate the nature of this relationship across families of racial and ethnic minority status. The Family Stress Model (FSM) of economic disadvantage serves as the theoretical framework guiding the initial discussion on poverty and parenting behaviors. The FSM is particularly useful in highlighting dimensions of poverty that supersede mere accounts of income levels, such as material hardship and financial strain. We identify three powerful mediators in the relationship between poverty and parenting stress that specifically impact racial and ethnic minority families—depression, family structure, and neighborhood environment—and underscore the neighborhood as a chief context that is overlooked by the FSM despite its significant contribution to the stressors faced by low-income minority parents. We then turn our discussion toward a more global context to explore the economic pressures facing migrant parents in transnational families. In our conclusion, we offer several areas for future research on poverty and parenting stress. These include a reformulation of the FSM to include children as active agents, as well research on suburban poverty and shift work.