Do Positive Parenting Practices Moderate Parental Mental Health and Child Behavior Among Homeless Families?

• Author: Kendal Holtrop,Jamila Reynolds,Shardé McNeil Smith
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/fare.12166
• Published date: 01 December 2015
• Date: 01 December 2015

S MN S University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign

K H  J R The Florida State University∗

Do Positive Parenting Practices Moderate Parental

Mental Health and Child Behavior Among

Homeless Families?

The social interaction learning framework was

used to explore whether positive parenting

practices (noncoercive discipline, clear expec-

tations, and praise and incentives) mitigated

any effects of parent mental health (psycho-

logical distress and parenting stress) on child

externalizing behaviors in a predominantly

African American sample of homeless parents

residing in transitional housing (N=52, 79.6%

female). The results showed that the positive

relationship between psychological distress and

child behavior was attenuated when parents

provided high levels of praise and incentives.

In addition, a positive relationship between

parenting stress and child behavior existed only

when parents transmitted low levels of praise

and incentives. No signicant ndings existed

for noncoercive discipline and clear expecta-

tions. The results suggest the need to further

understand the positive aspects of parenting in

the context of homelessness that can promote

child adjustment even if parental mental health

is compromised.

Department of African American Studies, University of

Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, 1201 West Nevada Street,

Urbana, IL 61801 (snsmith@illinois.edu).

∗Department of Family and Child Sciences, College of

Human Sciences, 225 Sandels Building, Florida State Uni-

versity, Tallahassee, FL, 32306

Key Words: child externalizing behavior, homeless families,

parenting practices, parent mental health.

Homelessness is a unique and substantial con-

textual stressor that is experienced by many fam-

ilies in the United States. The U.S. Department

of Housing and Urban Development (2014) esti-

mates that, on a given night in 2014, well over

half a million people were experiencing home-

lessness. More than 37% of this population is

composed of people in families, which amounts

to 67,613 families with children being affected

by homelessness. Furthermore, these homeless

families are typically comprised of a single

mother with young children and are dispropor-

tionately African American (U.S. Department

of Housing and Urban Development, 2010),

suggesting the presence of additional burdens

and vulnerabilities as a result of social location.

Given the signicance of this problem, it is

important that scholars continue to explore

the correlates, risk and protective factors, and

outcomes associated with homelessness.

Homelessness presents a complex set of

challenges for families (see Bassuk, 2010, for a

comprehensive review). Children who are expe-

riencing homelessness have been found to have

poorer educational outcomes, behavioral prob-

lems, increased likelihood of trauma, and mental

health problems (David, Gelberg, & Suchman,

2012; Perlman, Cowan, Gewirtz, Haskett, &

Stokes, 2012). Concurrently, their parents are

experiencing an overall increase in stressful

life events, fewer economic resources, chronic

neighborhood and domestic violence, limited

access to social support, low self-esteem, and

606 Family Relations 64 (December 2015): 606–620

DOI:10.1111/fare.12166