Testing Family Stress and Family Investment Explanations for Conduct Problems Among African American Adolescents
| Published date | 01 April 2016 |
| Author | T. K. Lee,Melissa Landers‐Potts,Carolyn Cutrona,K. A. S. Wickrama,Rand D. Conger,Leslie Gordon Simons |
| Date | 01 April 2016 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12278 |
L G S University of Georgia
K. A. S. W, T. K. L, M L-P University of Georgia∗
C C Iowa State University∗∗
R D. C University of California Davis∗∗∗
Testing Family Stress and Family Investment
Explanations for Conduct Problems Among African
American Adolescents
The recent U.S. recession has resulted in higher
rates of unemployment, underemployment, and
child poverty, with African Americans dispro-
portionately represented among the nancially
disadvantaged. Although past research has
established the relationship between family
nancial hardship and various child adjust-
ment problems, African Americans remain an
understudied group. In the current study the
authors used longitudinal data from the Family
and Community Health Study (n=422), an
all African American sample, to investigate
the impact of economic distress on adolescent
conduct problems. They examined the extent
to which this relationship can be explained by
2 frequently employed models: (a) the family
Department of Sociology, Universityof Georgia, Athens,
GA 30602 (lgsimons@uga.edu).
∗Department of Human Development and Family Science,
116 Dawson Hall, University of Georgia, Athens, GA
30602.
∗∗Department of Psychology, W112 Lagomarcino Hall,
Iowa State University,Ames, IA 50011.
∗∗∗Department of Human and Community Development,
1361 Hart Hall, University of California, Davis, CA 95616.
Key Words: adolescents, African Americans, delinquency,
parenting, poverty,theory.
stress model and (b) the family investment
model. The authors extend past research by
assessing the relative contributions of each
model while controlling for the paths proposed
by the other model. The results suggest that the
family processes identied by the family stress
model provide a more accurate explanation
for why economic hardship is associated with
increased conduct problems among African
American adolescents.
The recent economic recession in the United
States has highlighted the need for research
that addresses the impact of nancial stres-
sors on families, especially those who have
been hit hardest. Between 2000 and 2010,
the unemployment rate in the United States
increased from 4% to 10% and, among African
Americans, 16% were jobless (U.S. Bureau of
Labor Statistics, 2011). Although the economy
has improved in recent months, there is still a
strong racial disparity in the recovery. The U.S.
Bureau of Labor Statistics (2015) reported a
national unemployment rate of 4.9%, whereas
for African Americans it was 10.4%. Con-
tinuing a historical trend of income disparity,
the median household income in the United
States in 2010 was $60,088, while for African
498 Journal of Marriage and Family 78 (April 2016): 498–515
DOI:10.1111/jomf.12278
Testing Family Stress and Investment Explanations 499
American households it was $38,409 (U.S.
Census Bureau, 2010). The wealth gap was
even wider. The median value of assets among
White (non-Hispanic) households was more
than $110,000, while for African American
households it was $6,300 (U.S. Census Bureau,
2011a). Furthermore, according to the U.S.
Census Bureau (2011b), the child poverty rate
for African American children below age 18
(38.2%) was nearly twice the national average
(22%) and more than three times higher than the
rate for White children (12.4%).
Although the past two decades have seen an
increase on the literature that addresses conse-
quences of poverty for African Americans (see
Danziger & Lin, 2000; Hardaway & McLoyd,
2009; Jones & Luo, 1999; Quillian, 2012), this
is still an understudied topic of research. There
continues to be a need for research that exam-
ines the mediating factors that account for the
deleterious consequences of economic hardship
for African American families. This is an issue
of concern because, as Wilson (1991) noted,
poverty may be particularly destructive for this
population. For example, poor African Ameri-
cans are more likely than poor Whites to live
in socially isolated areas, such as urban hous-
ing projects, they have less in terms of resources
when they enter poverty compared to Whites,
and they are often without family members who
have nancial resources to help them during hard
times (McLoyd, 1990).
In the current study we extended past research
by providing a more extensive investigation of
the avenues whereby family nancial hardship
inuences African American families with ado-
lescents. We used three waves of data obtained
from a sample of more than 400 African Amer-
ican families to examine the effect of eco-
nomic distress on youth conduct problems. This
outcome is especially salient for this popula-
tion given the disproportionately high rates of
delinquency and crime in African American
communities (Krivo & Peterson, 2009; Samp-
son, 2012). Identifying risk factors for delin-
quency is important because externalizing prob-
lems in childhood and adolescence are asso-
ciated with long-term negative consequences
across the life course. For example, early behav-
ioral problems are associated with lower life-
time educational achievement and with greater
unemployment, participation in adult criminal
behavior, and health risk behaviors (Bradley
& Corwyn, 2002; Kwon & Wickrama, 2013;
Odgers et al., 2008; R. L. Simons, Stewart, Gor-
don, Conger, & Elder, 2002). Furthermore, the
Ofce for Civil Rights (2012) reported that,
compared to Whites, African American students
are disproportionately likely to be suspended
or expelled from school and referred to law
enforcement when they engage in misbehav-
ior. The potentially high future costs associated
with adolescent delinquency highlight the need
to understand the ways in which economic hard-
ship leads to increased risk for behavioral prob-
lems. In the following section we describe and
summarize research on two models widely used
to explain the link between family economic
hardship and developmental outcomes for chil-
dren: (a) the family stress model (FSM) and (b)
the family investment model (FIM).
B
Past research shows that economic hardship has
negative consequences for adults and children.
For instance, low socioeconomic status (SES)
has a negative effect on adults’ physical and
mental health (e.g., Bradley & Corwyn, 2002;
Conger et al., 2002). For children, economic
disadvantage has an adverse inuence on aca-
demic performance (Landers-Potts, Wickrama,
Simons, Gibbons, & Conger, 2015; Seaton &
Taylor, 2003), internalizing problems (Conger
et al., 2002; McLeod & Shanahan, 1993; Seaton
& Taylor, 2003), and social development (Con-
ger et al., 2002; Conger, Ge, Elder, Lorenz, &
Simons, 1994; Mistry, Vandewater, Huston, &
McLoyd, 2002). Although a few studies have
focused on adolescent conduct problems (Con-
ger et al., 1994; Seaton & Taylor, 2003), this
topic has received less consideration.
The FSM and FIM are two explanatory mod-
els that have received signicant attention as
explanations for the link between family eco-
nomic hardship and consequences for youth.
Both are social causation models, which means
that they assume that nancial problems lead to
variations in social, psychological, and physical
functioning. However, they offer very different
explanations for why this is the case.
The FSM, rst proposed by Conger et al.
(1994), suggests that nancial difculties have a
negative impact on parents’ emotional state and
marital relations, which leads to a disruption
in effective parenting practices (e.g., a lack
of warmth and support, displays of aggres-
sion or hostility by parents, inconsistency,
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