The impact of economic hardship on black families and children: psychological distress, parenting, and socioemotional development.

The Impact of Economic Hardship on Black Families and Children: Psychological Distress, Parenting, and Socioemotional Development Vonnie C. McLoyd University of Michigan MCLOYD, VONNIE G. The Impact of Economic Hardship on Black Families and Children: Psychological Distress, Parenting, and Socioemotional Development. GHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1990, 61,311346. Family processes affecting the socioemotional functioning of children living in poor families and families experiencing economic decline are reviewed. Black children are of primary interest in the article because they experience disproportionate shares of the burden of poverty and economic loss and are at substantially higher risk than white children of experiencing attendant socioemotional problems. It is argued that (a) poverty and economic loss diminish the capacity for supportive, consistent, and involved parenting and render parents more vulnerable to the debilitating effects of negative life events, {b) a major mediator of the link between economic hardship and parenting behavior is psychological distress deriving from an excess of negative life events, undesirable chronic conditions, and the absence and disruption of marital bonds, (c) economic hardship adversely affects children's socioemotional functioning in part through its impact on the parent's behavior toward the child, and (d) father-child relations under conditions of economic hardship depend on the quality of relations between tlie mother and father. The extent to which psychological distress is a source of race differences in parenting behavior is considered. Finally, attention is given to the mechanisms by which parents' social networks reduce emotional strain, lessen the tendency toward punitive, coercive, and inconsistent parenting behavior, and, in tum, foster positive socioemotional development in economically deprived children.

Black children always have bome a disproportionate share of the burden of poverty and economic decline in America, and they are at substantially higher risk than white children for experiencing an array of socioemotional problems (Gibbs, 1989; Myers & King, 1983). Drawing from disparate bodies of literature, this article examines parental behavior and family processes as consequences of poverty and economic loss and, in tum, as antecedents of impaired socioemotional functioning in black children. Although economic hardship can adversely affect parental and family functioning, several factors temper

fathers are sparse. Gonversely, a modest amount of research exists concerning economic loss as experienced by blacks, but this work, hke that on whites, focuses almost exclusively on men. Little is known about how economic loss affects black women and black children or the mechanisms by which these effects might occur. Gonsequently, although blacks are the focal concern in this article, the discussion of the effects of economic loss on children rehes heavily on research based on white samples, most of which comes from two periods—the 1930s and the 1980s,

these effects. In this article, attention is fo-

Analytic Framework

cused on sources of variation in parents' responses to economic hardship and the implications of these relations for black children's socioemotional development.

T^. i i ^^ j i r . F^gêl presents an analytic model of how Poverty and economic loss affect black children. This model functions as a framework tor examining and organizing the research reviewed in this article. The central aim of the article is to demonstrate that a broad array of studies, taken together, provide strong support for the model. The model is

The data base concerning blacks is uneven. Black mothers and children living in poverty have been the focus of numerous psychological studies, but data about poor black

Preparation of this manuscript was supported in part by a Faculty Scholar Award in Ghild Mental Health from the William T. Grant Foundation. The author is grateful to Eve Trager for bibliographic assistance and to Mutombo Mpanya, Leon Wilson, Patricia Gurin, Oscar Barbarin, and three anonymous reviewers for valuable comments on the original version of the manuscript. Send requests for reprints to Vonnie G. McLoyd, Department of Psychology, 3433 Mason Hall, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109. [Child Development, 1990, 61, 311-346. © 1990 by the Society for Research in Child Development, Inc. All rights reserved. 0009-3920/90/6102.^0020$01.00]

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Child Development Parent 'ApptBisal •Personality • Financial Resources

Psychological Distress

• Poverty

• Economic Loss

Marital Bond

Social Support and Controls • Extended Family Menibers • j^ctra&milial Individuals • Connnunity

Parental • Behavior • Relations

Child Socioemotional Problems

I ChUd • Temperament • Physical Appearance #•

moderator variables

FIG. 1.—Analytic model of how poverty and economic loss affect black children

representative of the person-process-context model espoused by Bronfenbrenner (1986) in that it describes the impact of economic hardship on family processes as a function of personal characteristics of individual family members, including the child. Its principal assumptions are that (a) poverty and economic loss diminish the capacity for supportive, consistent, and involved parenting; {b) a major mediator of the link between economic hardship and parenting behavior is psychological distress deriving from an excess of negative life events, undesirable chronic conditions, and the absence and disruption of marital bonds; (c) economic loss and poverty affect children indirectly through their impact on the parent's behavior toward the child; and {d) fether-child relations under conditions of economic hardship depend on the quality of relations between the mother and father. Basic elements of the conceptual framework as it pertains to economic loss are drawn from Elder's pioneering studies of white families of the Great Depression (Elder, 1979; Elder, Liker, & Cross, 1984; Elder, Nguyen, & Caspi, 1985). This research indicated that fathers who sustained heavy financial loss became more irritable, tense, and explosive, which in turn increased their tendency to be punitive toward the child. They also became more arbitrary, defined here as being inconsistent in discipline as a function of mood. These negative fathering behaviors were pre-

dictive of several socioemotional problems in the child. A number of economic and social changes occurring since the Depression (e.g., unemployment compensation, severance pay, employment of spouse, and the fact that unemployment precipitated by job loss tends to be of shorter duration) probably lessen the negative impact of job and income loss in today's context (Jahoda, 1979; LeGrande, 1983). Although the magnitude of the effects may differ, the direction of effects and the mechanisms by which economic loss affects children are similar for these two periods. The causal pathway documented by Elder linking economic loss to the child through the father's behavior has been replicated in recent studies of contemporary white children (Galambos & Silbereisen, 1987a; Kelley, Sheldon, & Fox, 1985; Lempers, Clark-Lempers, & Simons, 1989). Furthermore, other research is consistent with the mediational model presented here, although not focusing on fathers or economic hardship in particular. Patterson's (1988; Patterson, DeBarsyshe, & Ramsey, 1989) studies, for example, demonstrate convincingly that stressful experiences increase psychological distress in mothers and produce changes in family and child-management practices. Distressed mothers' increased use of aversive, coercive discipline in tum contributes to antisocial behavior in the child.

Vonnie C. McLoyd There are legitimate reasons for questioning extrapolation from white families experiencing economic loss to black families. Differences in economic resources, employment opportunities, perceptions of the causes of economic loss, and other factors associated with race may modify responses to economic loss. We know of no carefully controlled studies of changes in the parenting behavior of blacks in response to economic loss, but there are a few investigations of the effects of unemployment on the psychological functioning of black men. These studies report numerous negative effects, some of which are more pronounced in blacks than whites. Furthermore, certain factors that buffer negative effects in whites operate in a similar fashion among blacks (Buss & Redbum, 1983). To a limited extent, this similarity between findings mitigates the issue of generalizability and bolsters confidence that other links in the model documented only for whites are generalizable to blacks. Ultimately, though, only careful study of black children in families experiencing economic loss will resolve decisively the question of whether they are affected by economic loss through processes similar to those documented for contemporary as well as Depression-era white families. Like economic decline, poverty and lower-class status are marked by relatively punitive and coercive pattems of parenting behavior and in several theoretical formulations, the underlying cause is seen to be psychological distress in the parent (Gecas, 1979). For example, in his fmstration-aggression hypothesis, McKinley (1964) argued that negative life conditions lead to frustration that evokes aggression. According to this view, aggression often is displaced to the family where fewer restraints exist than in the workplace and other settings. The theoretical perspectives of this genre do not always clearly distinguish between lower-class and working-class parents, who are contrasted to middle-class parents. Nonetheless, they share a common explanatory model which assumes that stressful life conditions endemic to lower status adversely affect the parent's psychological orientation, or emotional state, which in tum influence parent-child interaction. The centerpiece of many of these theories, especially those growing out of the "culture of poverty" framework, are personality characteristics of parents. These characteristics are seen as stable, deficient, and maintained by intergenerational transmission of lifeways independent of poverty, even though they are thought to have developed initially as adap-

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tations to the conditions of poverty (Gecas, 1979). This article depsirts from the emphasis on stable "cultural" traits and instead devotes special attention to the mediational role of psychological distress, seen here as a normative and situational response to economic hardship. The idea that psychological distress mediates the link between economic hardship and parenting behavior has a long history (Gecas, 1979), but there exists only indirect empirical support for it, most of it produced in the last decade. In the discussion that follows, this work is highlighted and interpreted as lending support to the causal assumptions in our model. It must be conceded, however, that there are altemative explanations of the links among economic disadvantage, psychological characteristics, and parenting. It is possible, for example, that parents have psychological characteristics that predispose them to both economic hardship and punitive parenting. The hypothesis that poverty is caused by psychological factors is espoused in a number of ethnographic studies (e.g., Lewis, 1966). Perhaps the most serious challenge to that view is rendered by the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID). This longitudinal study has charted the economic well-being of a nationally representative sample of American families each year since 1968, making it possible to test difFerent causal models. It indicates that differences between individuals in various psychological characteristics, in the main, are the result of past changes in economic status, not die cause of subsequent improvement or deterioration in economic status (Corcoran, Duncan, Gurin, & Gurin, 1985). However, it should be emphasized that this study focuses primarily on motivational factors, only one of several domains of psychological functioning that might influence one's vulnerability to poverty. Questions about causal direction also are salient in the research literature about economic loss. Existing research demonstrates that many of the negative psychological states associated with job loss are true effects of job loss rather than selective factors leading to job loss (e.g., Kessler, House, & Turner, 1987). Furthermore, in a number of studies reporting negative psychological effects, men lost jobs because of plant and factory closings. In such instances, the claim that personality factors played a systematic, causal role in economic loss is untenable (Buss & Redbum, 1983; Kasl & Cobb, 1979). Taken together, these data buttress the causal assumptions in our analytic model, but it is still possible that

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poverty and economic loss are caused by psychological factors not examined in existing studies. Emphasis on psychological distress does not deny that ideational factors such as parental values and beliefs evolving out of the experiences of poverty also may mediate the link between poverty and parenting behavior (Kohn, 1963; Ogbu, 1981). Power-assertive discipline, for example, may stem partly from parents' intention to teach functional competences (e.g., self-reliance, ability to manipulate people, and mistrust of people in authority) thought to foster the child's survival in environments marked by marginal conventional economic resources and a vital underground economy (Ogbu, 1981). It is likely that ideational factors and psychological distress in the parent serve to reinforce each other as determinants of class-linked patterns of parenting and thus may best be seen as complementary rather than mutually exclusive. Parenting behavior that arises out of stress may become legitimized or rationalized as a value to reduce dissonance (Ho£&nan, 1984), and espousal of that value may, in tum, further stabilize the parenting style. In addition to the effects of economic hardship on parenting, the analytic model maps a specific pathway by which economic adversity affects the child socioemotionally. The work of Elder and his colleagues (Elder, 1979; Elder et al., 1984, 1985), together with recent investigations of contemporary families (Galambos & Silbereisen, 1987a, 1987b; Lempers et al., 1989), provides compelling evidence that children in families sustaining economic decline suffer a variety of socioemotional problems as a result of negative changes in parenting behavior. We hypothesize that a similar mediational process operates within the context of poverty. Severe economic loss narrows the gap between the previously nondeprived and the chronically poor in terms of material resources and psychological distress. Consequently, these two groups are likely to differ from economically advantaged individuals in similar ways along a number of dimensions. It is for this reason that we believe it is legitimate to integrate the research on poverty and economic loss using psychological distress as a unifying variable. For two reasons, however, we make no claim that negative parenting behavior is the primary pathway through which poverty undermines children's socioemotional functioning. First, there is insufficient evidence to

support such a contention. Rarely have researchers actually documented the degree to which family socialization processes account for socioemotional problems in poor children though, to be sure, they have made these links at the conceptual level. Second, poverty is an extremely complex phenomenon that differs from economic loss in important ways. Chronic poverty is not a unitary variable or distinct event, such as job or income loss, but a conglomerate of stressful conditions and events. It is a pervasive rather than bounded crisis, distinguished partly by a high contagion of stressors (Makosky, 1982; Masten, Morison, Pellegrini, & Tellegen, in press; Ray & McLoyd, 1986). More than economic loss, especially if it is transitory, chronic poverty severely constricts choices in virtually all domains of life (e.g., choice of neighborhood, school, educational and recreational activities), renders the person more subject to control by others (e.g., social workers), and increases the probability that the child will be viewed negatively and receive less positive attention and more criticism from teachers (Gouldner, 1978). These experiences, as well as the egregious lack of employment opportunities for poor black adolescents (Shapiro, 1981), may affect socioemotional development adversely (Fumham, 1985; Wallace, 1974). There also may be effects due to growing up in a poor "^neighborhood (Jencks & Mayer, in press), a particularly salient issue in understanding economically deprived black children because they frequently grow up in poor, isolated, urban neighborhoods, whereas this is rarely the case for poor white children (Wilson, 1987). It is beyond the scope of this article to review these ecological issues, although we touch on neighborhood characteristics as they affect parenting behavior. The point we wish to make is that the processes that mediate negative child outcomes associated with chronic poverty, compared to those associated with economic loss, may be more complex, less localized to the family setting, and more likely to involve extrafamilial socialization agents. Because of its pervasiveness, then, we assume that chronic poverty indirectly influences children's socioemotional development through altemate pathways and that these pathways are more numerous than those through which economic loss affects children. In addition, chronic poverty probably is more likely than economic loss to have a direct impact on the child because it is longstanding and defines the child's immediate environment, almost in its entirety, whereas

Vonnie C. McLoyd 315 job and income loss are often transitory and originate in the workplace external to the child's immediate environment. Supporting this idea is research indicating that chronic stressful conditions such as poverty and parental punitiveness are more likely than stressful life events to play a direct etiological role in children's psychological impairment (Gersten, Langner, Eisenberg, & SimchaFagan, 1977). This review is divided into five major sections. In keeping with our analytic model, we begin with a discussion of the dynamics of poverty and economic decline among black children and the stmctural forces that have infiuenced these dynamics. This section summarizes recent, significant advances in our understanding of these issues and provides a backdrop and anchor for the discussion of socialization and socioemotional development that follows. In the second section, attention is given to the emotional states and psychological functioning of parents who are experiencing economic hardship. The environmental stressors associated with economic disadvantage, as well as the relation between race and mental health, are discussed. Encompassed in this section is research on income loss, job loss, unemployment, and poverty. This seemed reasonable because, common to these subcategories of economic hardship (which often overlap) is the fact that income is insufficient to support either needs or customary patterns of consumption, placing adaptive demands of varying degrees of severity on the individual and the family. The third section of the article focuses on economic and race differences in parenting behaviors and concludes that psychological distress partly explains these differences. We also examine how the quality of father-mother relations in the context of economic hardship affects parental treatment of the child. In the fourth section, evidence is reviewed that directly ties punitive, nonsupportive, and erratic discipline with psychological distress in parents and documents the effects of these parenting behaviors on children's socioemotional functioning. The linkages among parents' emotional state, treatment of children, and children's socioemotional functioning are underscored further in a discussion of parents' social networks. We suggest that through the provision of social support and exercise of child-rearing sanctions, parents' networks ease emotional distress in parents, temper harsh parental treatment, and in tum foster positive socioemotional development in impoverished children. TTie fourth section is not

organized according to the age or developmental status of the child. Rather, it combines, by content area, studies of children representing a broad age span and emcompasses numerous child outcomes under the rubric of "socioemotional functioning." Few investigations have sought to determine if age or developmental status is a determinant of children's vulnerability to harsh, erratic discipline or, in particular, if it modifies the direct and indirect effects of economic hardship. In those studies that have addressed these questions, age or developmental status does not emerge as a consistent predictor (Elder et al., 1979). Nonetheless, we suspect that further research will confirm that the analytic model presented here requires some modifications to accommodate different developmental periods (e.g., influence of peers during adolescence, adolescent employment). The final section identifies major gaps in our knowledge about the impact of economic hardship on black families and children and offers suggestions for future research. The Dynamics of Poverty and Economic Decline among Black Children The proportion of black children living in poverty soared during the 1980s. Between 1979 and 1985, the rate of poverty for black children 18 years and under increased from 36% to 41%, compared to an increase from 12% to 13% for white children during the same period (Duncan, 1988). Even more alarming than race differences in the poverty rate in any particular year is the race disparity in the number of children who experience persistent poverty. Duncan and Rodgers (1988) used longitiidinal data from the 19681982 waves of the PSID to characterize pattems of poverty among children who were under the age of 4 in 1968 and for whom data were available for each of the succeeding 14 years. They found that 24% of black children, compared to six-tenths of 1% of non-black children, were poor for at least 10 of the 15 years. Furthermore, 4.9% of black children were poor the entire 15-year period, whereas this was true for none of the non-black children. In sum, black children accounted for the total number of children who wêre poor all 15 years and for almost 90% of the children who were poor during at least 10 of the 15 years. Fewer than one in seven (13%) black children lived comfortably above the poverty line all 15 years (family income at least 150% of the poverty level), while over half (56%) of all non-black children enjoyed this status.

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The persistence of poverty among black children was strongly affected by geographic location. Contrary to popular notion, black children who lived in rural areas, as compared to those who lived in urban areas, and black children who lived in the South, as compared to those who resided outside the South, spent more years in poverty (Duncan, 1988). Black children also are more subject to drops in family income relative to need. Over one-third (35%) of black children in the PSID lived in households in which income relative to needs fell by more than 50% at least once between 1969 and 1979, compared to 26% of white children. Black households were less likely than white households to have expected the loss (4% vs. 7%) and were markedly less likely to have savings to blunt its impact (16% vs. 48%) (Duncan & Rodgers, 1988). Because they were not well off to begin with, black children were more likely than white children to fall into poverty following events that reduced economic resources, such as family breakups, cutbacks in work hours of household members, and disability of the household head (Duncan, 1986). The extraordinarily high and increasing incidence of economic hardship among black children is the result of complex and interrelated factors, including structural changes in the economy that have resulted in increasingly high rates of joblessness, low wages, family stmcture, and institutional barriers. Joblessness and structural changes in the economy.—Even in the best of times, the official unemployment rate of black workers typically is twice that of white workers. Blacks' increased vulnerability to unemployment is attributable to several factors, including lesser education, lesser skill training, less job seniority, fewer transportable job skills, and institutional barriers (Buss & Redbum, 1983). Moreover, black workers have been hit especially hard by recent structural changes in the economy: (a) Rates of job displacement in the manufacturing sector are higher and reemployment rates lower in precisely those blue-collar occupations in which blacks are overrepresented. Loss of higher-paying manufacturing jobs as the economy shifts from goods-producing to service-producing industries has forced substantial numbers of black workers into much lower-paying trade or service positions (James, 1985; Simms, 1987). {b) The relocation of manufacturing employment from central cities to outlying areas has been more detrimental to blacks because they reside in central cities in disproportionate numbers (in 1980, 58% compared to 25% for the

rest of the population), (c) The transformation of central cities from centers of production to centers of administration has generated sharp increases in white-collar employment and thus higher educational requirements for employment, but blacks rely disproportionately on blue-collar employment and average lower levels of education than whites. Conversely, virtually all of the recent growth in entrylevel jobs requiring lower levels of education has occurred in the suburbs and nonmetropolitan areas away from high concentrations of poorly educated blacks (Fusfeld & Bates, 1984; Wilson, 1987). It comes as no surprise that loss of employment and work hours among adults has direct consequences for children's economic well-being. The two events resulting in the greatest net increase in poverty among black children in the PSID were fewer work hours of individuals in the household other than the father or mother and fewer work hours of male household heads (Duncan & Rodgers, 1988). Low wages.—Large numbers of blacks who reside in the inner cities and have low levels of education work full time in lowwage industries (e.g., retail, service) but eam less than a poverty-level income. The lowwage labor force is preserved by high rates of unemployment, lack of union organization, and large numbers ofjobs that are not covered by "protective" legislation (e.g., minimum wage) (Fusfeld & Bates, 1984; Halpem, 1987). The past 2 decades have been marked by substantial economic attrition among poor and young families (Duncan, 1988). Black families headed by persons 24 years old or younger lost 47% of their real incomes between 1973 and 1986 (William T. Grant Commission on Work, Family and Citizenship, 1988). This trend is due in part to the fact that the minimum wage has been held at the same level since January 1981, despite rising infiation. A full-time minimum wage job today pays only 75% of the poverty line for a femily of three, compared to 103.6% in 1964 (Edelman, 1987). Being a minimum wage worker and being poor are not synonymous, but the likelihood of being poor is considerably higher for minimum wage workers. In 1985, fully one-third of minimum wage workers ^vere in families in which no other member held a job, and 42% of all workers holding minimum wage jobs were adult women (Smith & Vavrichek, 1987). Rising incidence of female-headed households.—Since 1960, the number of

Vonnie C. McLoyd black families headed by women has more than tripled, primarily as a function of the increased preveJence of out-of-wedlock births (i.e., from 25% of all black births in 1960 to 55% in 1979) and a general decline in fertility among married black women (Center for the Study of Social Policy, 1986; Wilson, 1987). There is a growing consensus that a major cause of the rise in female-headed families among blacks is the deteriorating economic status of black men (Center for the Study of Social Policy, 1986; Garfinkel & McLanahan, 1986; Staples, 1986; Wilson & Neckerman, 1986). Data clearly show that increases in the percentage of black families headed by women have been accompanied by parallel increases in the percentage of black men out of the labor force, unemployed, or whose earnings are below the poverty line (Center for the Study of Social Policy, 1986). This relation is in keeping with data indicating that entry into marriage is less likely and marital dissolution more likely if the husband is unemployed or poor than if the husband is employed or more affluent (Bishop, 1977; Furstenberg, 1976; William T. Grant Commission on Work, Family and Citizenship, 1988). Because most recent retrenchments have been in the manufacturing sector, where male workers predominate, rather than in the service sector, where women are more likely to be employed, black men have been more negatively affected than black women by the stmctural changes in the economy mentioned above (Collins, 1986). Their labor force participation rate dropped from 84% in 1940 to 67% in 1980, compared to a drop from 82% to 76% for white men during the same period. It is among male youth and prime-age men (i.e., those most likely to have dependent children) that the race differences in labor force trends are most pronounced (Wilson & Neckerman, 1986). A similar trend is observed when the earnings of black men are fracked over time. The percentage of black males between the ages of 20 and 24 with earnings at or above the three-person poverty line decreased from 54% in 1973 to 24% in 1986 (William T. Grant Foundation Commission on Work, Family and Citizenship, 1988). Other evidence of the declining economic status of black men has been reported by Allen and Farley (1986). According to these researchers, between 1969 and 1983 the median income of black male youth (15 to 24 years) as a percent of whites' fell from 91% to 61%. For prime-age black men (25 to 34 years), it fell from 68% to 65%. These trends, along with high black male mortality and incarceration rates, have re-

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sulted in a shrinking pool of marriageable black men, that is, those who are in a position to support a family (Wilson & Neckerman, 1986). Note that these trends do not mean that black women are in a superior labor market position relative to black men. As compared to black men, they have less difficulty finding stable work but gamer much lower wages (Collins, 1986). Currently, about 45% of all black children live in female-headed households. Of these children, 70% are poor, compared to 24% of black children who live in two-parent families (Center for the Study of Social Policy, 1986). Two primary events result in femaleheaded household, namely, births to unmarried women and marital dissolution, and both are more common among blacks than whites. Recent data indicate that births to unmarried women account for 41% of all black households headed by women, while divorce and separation account for another 51% (Staples, 1986). Spells of childhood poverty that begin at birth, relatively more common among blacks than whites, are substantially longer than spells of poverty that begin when families change from male- to female-headed. Data also indicate that the longer a person has been poor, the less likely it is that he or she will escape poverty (Bane & EUwood, 1986). Black children are further disadvantaged because the economic consequences ofchange from male- to female-headship are more devastating for them than for white children. In the PSID, divorce or separation was the most frequent family event precipitating incometo-need declines by more than 50%, and these events pushed proportionately more black children than white children into poverty (Duncan & Rodgers, 1988). Furthermore, black children spend more time than white children in a single-parent femily before making the transition to a two-parent family and are much more likely than white children to remain in a single-parent family for the duration of childhood (Duncan & Rodgers, 1987). All of these factors contribute to the enormous race differences in the persistence of poverty mentioned earlier. However, even when seen as deriving from the declining economic fortunes of black men, racial differences in family structure clearly are not the sole factor responsible for the increased prevalence of poverty among black children. The expected prevalence of poverty among black children living in twoparent families throughout childhood is roughly the same as the expected prevalence

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of poverty among white children who spend their entire childhood living in single-parent famihes (3.0 years vs. 3.2 years) (Duncan & Rodgers, 1987). Institutional barriers deriving directly from past or present racial discrimination (e.g., housing pattems in relation to the location of jobs, restricted educational and employment opportunities) undoubtedly are implicated in this racial disparity (Wilson, 1987). Poverty among blacks, unlike that among whites, is conjoined to and complicated by racism. Consequently, the problems of poor blacks probably cannot be solved in the same way as the problems of impoverished whites (Washington, 1988a). We now tum to a discussion of the effects of economic hardship on the mental health and marital relations of adults. Attention is given to race, social class, and a range of personal and social factors that temper and accentuate these effects. As suggested in our analytic model, these psychosocial processes have important implications for how parents treat their children.

The Psychological and Emotional States of Parents Experiencing Economic Hardship Adults who are poor have more mental health problems than their economically advantaged counterparts. An inverse relation between socioeconomic status and various forms of psychological distress and mental disorder has been reported by several researchers (Liem & Liem, 1978; McLoyd & Wilson, in press; Neff & Husaini, 1980). For example, McAdoo (1986) found perceived psychological distress to be significantly higher among single black women with lower incomes, compared to those with higher incomes. Liem and Liem (1978) have argued that this relation reflects the complex interaction between class position and at least three facets of psychiatric impairment, namely, etiology, maintenance, and treatment. We focus here on etiology. Among the etiological factors responsible for the elevation of mental health problems among the poor is an overrepresentation in lower-class life of a broad range of frustration-producing life events and chronic conditions outside personal control (Liem & Liem, 1978). Individuals who are poor are confronted with an unremitting succession of negative life events (e.g., eviction, physical illness, criminal assault) in the context of chronically stressful, ongoing life conditions such as inadequate housing and dangerous neighborhoods that

together increase the exigencies of day-to-day existence. Because of limited financial resources, negative life events often precipitate additional crises such that stressors are highly contagious (Makosky, 1982). Increased efforts to generate income or reduce family expenditures are positively associated with economic strain and psychological distress among poor single mothers (McLoyd & Wilson, in press). Psychological impairment is more severe when catastrophic events are not under the control of the individual (Liem & Liem, 1978). Furthermore, ongoing stressful conditions associated with poverty such as inadequate housing and shortfalls of money are more debilitating than acute crises and negative events (Belle, 1984; Brown, Bhrolchain, & Harris, 1975; Makosky, 1982). Consistent with this conclusion, Dressier (1985) found that chronic economic stress (e.g., difficulty paying bills, worrying about money, not having enough money for health care) was the strongest predictor of depression among blacks living in randomly selected households. In some studies, after chronic stressors are controlled, the efifects of life events on psychological distress are diminished to borderline significance (Dressier, 1985; Gersten et al., 1977; Pearlin, Lieberman, Menaghan, & Mullan, 1981). Even though economic loss does not necessarily push a worker and his or her family into poverty, it can trigger a range of unwelcomed changes and, in tum, precipitate psychological distress. It may leave the individua] bereft of a sense of identity and purpose, social contacts, and a central activity around which to structure time (Jahoda, 1982). In addition, job and income loss typically deprive individuals and their families of material support. To compensate, families may reduce consumption, apply for loans or public assistance, sell possessions, and withdraw savings to pay bills. Other stressors that may emerge in the wake of economic loss include forced relocation, entry of other family members into the labor market, and unwanted changes in marital and family relations (Buss & Redbum, 1983; Elder, 1974; Elder, Conger, & Foster, 1989; McLoyd, 1989). Not surprisingly, adaptations of this kind are more frequent as the level of economic pressure increases (Elder et al., 1989). Many studies indicate that both black and white adults experiencing job loss or severe income loss, as compared to individuals who are employed or whose income loss is less severe, are more depressed, anxious, and

Vonnie C. McLoyd hostile and have elevated feelings of victimization and dissatisfaction with themselves and tlieir lives. They consume more alcohol, have more somatic complaints and eating and sleeping problems, and are at higher risk of neurosis, psychoticism, and suicide (Buss & Redbum, 1983; Gary, 1985; Holahan, Betak, Spearly, & Chance, 1983; James, LaCroix, Heinbaum, & Strogatz, 1984; Kasl & Cobb, 1979; Liem, 1983; Theorell, Lind, & Floderus, 1975). Pessimism about life increases as income loss increases (Galambos & Silbereisen, 1987a), and the more substantial the adaptations to make ends meet, the higher the level of psychological distress (Elder et al.,.1989). Expectancy of economic hardship is associated with poor mental health, although the causal nature of this relation is unclear. Black men who anticipate failure in the role of primary breadwinner, father, and husband, as well those who worry about losing a job, have more psychological and physiological problems than black men who are more sanguine about their future prospects (Bowman, 1988; James et al., 1984). Certain demographic factors exacerbate the psychological difficulties resulting from unemployment. Unemployed heads of households with dependent children, compared to those without dependents, report more emotional distress, probably because financial strain and feelings of failure are more acute. Working-class men have been found to be more vulnerable than middle-class men to the negative effects of job loss. This is probably because they have fewer financial assets, experience longer periods of unemployment, and are more likely to define job loss as a crisis of either identity or economic survival (Buss & Redbum, 1983; Cohn, 1978). In general, the findings from studies comparing unemployment and employed individuals are in accord with those reported in aggregate studies, that is, studies examining the relation between the status of an economy (e.g., unemployment rate, inflation rate) and the mental health of the population it supports (Dooley & Catalano, 1980). For example, fluctuations in unemployment rates have been linked to indices of psychological distress (e.g., admissions to psychiatric hospitals) (Dooley & Catalano, 1980; Horwitz, 1984). As noted previously, recent research has demonstrated cogently that these are true effects and not simply selective factors that lead to job loss (Dew, Bromet, & Schulberg, 1987; Kessler, House, & Tumer, 1987). Not only has unemployment been shown to be directly responsible for increasing stress

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symptoms, but reemployment has been demonstrated to have health-promoting, restorative effects on fathers (Liem, 1983). Collectively, these studies present strong evidence that economic decline, like poverty, can adversely affect mental and physical well-being. As suggested in our model, economic hardship and the psychological distress it engenders have consequences for the quality and maintenance of the marital bond. We tum to these issues in the following section. Economic hardship, marital bonds, and mental health.—The links among economic hardship, marital bonds, and mental health are complex. Economic hardship promotes marital dissolution and deters marriage among couples who have children and those who do not (Bishop, 1977; Furstenberg, 1976). Difficult choices about the expenditure of inadequate sums of money can fuel spousal criticism and confiict. Because it lessens joint and amicable problem solving, emotional distress stemming from economic difficulty can contribute substantially to a growing wedge between spouses. A circular process may be set in motion in which conflict over adaptation strategies diminishes expressions of love and respect, which in tum lessens joint problem solving, leading to more conflict (Elder, 1974). In contexts where reduced family income is due mainly to the father's loss of earnings, mothers often gain in decision-making power. This change is highly predictive of marifed strain and low family integration (Elder, 1974; Silbereisen, Walper, & Albrecht, in press). The prospects of marital conflict and disintegration under the pressures created by economic loss also are heightened if the marriage was weak and unsatisfying prior to the economic crisis (Moen, Kain, & Elder, 1983) (for a fuller discussion of the effects of economic hardship on marital relations, see Ray & McLoyd, 1986). Just as it can contribute to marital discord, poor mental health may be a consequence of the dissolution and absence of marital bonds. Depression, psychosomatic problems, and drug abuse are more common in divorced adults than nondivorced adults (Hetherington, Stanley-Hagan, & Anderson, 1989). Whether it is a consequence of divorce or the failure to marry, single parenthood is a risk factor. Single mothers are at greater risk of anxiety, depression, and healtli problems than other marital status groups, and this risk is intensified if they are poor and live alone with their children (Guttentag, Salasin, & Belle, 1980). The inverse relation between socioeconomic status and various forms of

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psychological distress is particularly strong among single mothers (Belle, 1984; McAdoo, 1986; Pearlin & Johnson, 1977)—a finding of special significance given the large proportion of black children living in female-headed households. Some of this distress is rooted in the burdens and responsibilities of solo parenting, as is evidenced by the fact that the younger the child and the greater the number of children in the households the greater is the association between marital status and mental health problems (Pearlin & Johnson, 1977). Adding to their plight is the fact that poor single mothers are more socially isolated and generally experience their interaction with the public welfare system as demeaning and dehumanizing (Goodban, 1985; Marshall, 1982; Pearlin & Johnson, 1977). In addition, lower-class women are more likely to experience the illness or death of children, the imprisonment of husbands, and privation and major losses in childhood that may make coping with new losses even more difficult (Belle, 1984; Brown et al., 1975; Reese, 1982; Wortman, 1981). Even when income is controlled, families headed by single mothers are more likely than two-parent, "male-headed" families to experience stressful life events such as changes in income, job, residence, and household composition, and, for those in the labor force, unemployment (McLanahan, 1983; Weinraub & Wolf, 1983). Taken together, these findings suggest that the coexistence and co-occurence of difficult life circumstances and events associated with poverty exact an extraordinarily high toll on mental health. As Paarlin and Johnson (1977) succinctly put it, "the combination most productive of psychological distress is to be simultaneously single, isolated, exposed to burdensome parental obligations and—most serious of all—poor" (p. 714). Along similar lines. Tucker (1978) found that being single, poor, young, and black was the combination most productive of dissatisfied parenting and lack of parental fulfillment. Thus, increased psychological distress is one way by which parents' marital circumstances can impinge on parenting in economically deprived families. In contexts where marital discord flourishes or where there is no marital partner to provide support, psychological distress is high, which in tum can undermine the quality of parenting. Mothers assume the role of custodial parent in all but a small minority of cases in which marital ties are severed or fail to be established, making their mental health of particular signiflcance

to children's socialization and development (Blechman, 1982; McLoyd & Wilson, in press). Marital relations also are a major determinant of how father-son relations and paternal treatment of the child change in response to economic loss. These issues are discussed later. Economic hardship and increased vulnerability to other stressors.—In addition to exposing the individual to more acute and chronic stressors, poverty weakens the individual's ability to cope with new problems and difficulties, which consequently have more debilitating effects. Individuals who are poor are more likely than higher-status persons to suffer mental health problems following negative life events, a conclusion based on the fact that the positive relation between life-change scores and impairment is strongest in the lower class. This relation is even stronger when events outside the control of the individual are analyzed separately (Kessler & Cleary, 1980; Liem & Liem, 1978). Differences in the occurrence of stressful life events only partially account for the link between social class and psychological distress, and this too has prompted questions about the existence of greater responsiveness or vulnerability to stress among lower-class persons (Tumer & Noh, 1983). Social class differences in responsiveness to stress may stem from differences in social and economic resources. They also may be due to the excessive severity and chronicity of stressors in the lives of poor people, combined with the high frequency of negative life events over long periods of time—factors not always captured by stressful life event inventories that typically ask only about the occurrence of events within the last 12 months. The rapid succession of negative life events leaves little time for recuperation after each occurrence (Belle, 1984), and, over time, these events in conjunction with stressful chronic conditions grind away and deplete emotional reserves. A similar argument has been made by Myers and King (1983). They suggest that the confluence of racism and the stressors resulting from chronic urban poverty leads poor blacks to function at a higher basal stress level than the norm. That is, it primes individuals physiologically and psychologically to perceive a wider range of stimuli as stressful (Myers & King, 1983). Like people living in poverty, individuals who have suffered economic loss have been found to be vulnerable to the negative impact of other life events. Indeed, this increased vulnerability is one of the mecha-

Vonnie C. McLoyd nisms by which economic loss adversely affects psychological and physical well-being. Financial strain is the other pathway by which job loss influences well-being. When financial strain is controlled, unemployed workers who have not experienced some other stressful event in the previous year have been reported to be in no worse health than the stably employed (Kessler, Tumer, & House, 1987). Race and mental health.—Vulnerability to stress following negative life events is reported to be higher among blacks than whites (Neff, 1984, 1985). Consistent with this pattem, black males, compared to white males, suffer more impairment for longer periods of time (more health problems, elevated feelings of physical weakness, victimization, and depression) following loss of employment. They also report more family problems than white males well after losing their jobs (Buss & Redbum, 1983). The factors responsible for these race differences are not well understood, but might involve differences in actual and perceived prospects of finding new employment, differences in financial assets that cushion the financial impact of unemployment, as well as increased vulnerability. It will be recalled that black families in the PSID that experienced a major drop in income relative to need were much less likely than white families to have savings to blunt its impact (Duncan, 1988). Controlling for social class generally attenuates, but does not eliminate race differences in psychological distress (Neff, 1984), suggesting that there may be true effects of race on psychological distress. This is the conclusion drawn by Kessler and Neighbors (1986) on the bases of analyses of eight different surveys encompassing more than 22,000 black and white respondents. The indicators of psychological distress in the surveys were depression and somatic complaints associated with anxiety and depression. Race differences in distress were consistently and markedly greater among individuals with low incomes compared to those with higher ones. Moreover, these researchers found that the tme effect of race is suppressed, and the true effect of social class is magnified, in models that fail to take the interaction of race and social class into consideration. Blacks probably are more distressed than whites at low levels of income because their caste-like inferiorized status thwarts mobility aspirations and results in greater exposure to chronic, ongoing stressors (Dowhrenwend & Dowhrenwend, 1969; Pierce, 1975; Powell, 1982) and higher levels

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of resource deprivation (Kessler & Neighbors, 1986; Ogbu, 1978). This combination of factors puts lower-class black parents, and consequently their children, at high risk for mental health problems. Protective and stress-buffering factors.— As is clear from the preceding sections, considerable variation exists in the extent to which individuals succumb to the debilitating effects of stress brought on by economic hardship. Both social and individual factors have been found to contribute to this variation. Social and financial support buffer feelings of psychological distress among both black and white unemployed adults (Barbarin, in press; Gore, 1978; BCasl & Cobb, 1979; Kessler, House, & Tumer, 1987; Kessler, Tumer, & House, 1988) and feelings of depression in both black and white mothers on welfare (Colletta & Lee, 1983; Zur-Szpiro & Longfellow, 1982). Lest its defensive potency be overestimated, it is important to note that social support is not so robust a variable that it uniformly reduces psychological distress. For example, it is far less effective in buffering the psychological distress associated with chronic economic stressors than that induced by negative life events, especially among young black women (Dressier, 1985). Another potent protective factor consists of the individual's attributional biases. Men who do not hold themselves responsible for the loss of income or a job (Buss & Redbum, 1983; Cohn, 1978; Kasl & Cobb, 1979) and poor black women who do not blame themselves for being on welfare (Goodban, 1985) tend to have fewer psychological and physical health problems than those who blame themselves for their economic difficulties. Similarly, unemployed blacks who more frequently perceive themselves to be victims of racial discrimination report higher levels of psychological well-being than unemployed blacks whose perceived experience with racial discrimination is lower. Religiosity also is associated with lower distress among unemployed blacks (Barbarin, in press). Job and severe income loss pose greater risk to the mental health of parents, and consequently the child, when the parent defines job or income loss as a negative crisis-producing event (Barbarin, in press; Horwitz, 1984; Pemicci & Targ, 1988), is prone to self-denigration (Kessler et al., 1988), and has rigid, traditional conjugal and family role ideologies that make role changes difficult to implement and accept (Komarovsky, 1940; Powêll & DriscoU, 1973; Voydanoff, 1983).

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Poverty and economic loss thus increase the risk of emotional distress in adults and render them more vulnerable to the debilitating effects of negative life events. Distress associated with economic hardship is intensified if the adult is raising children alone, has dependent children, is black, socially isolated, or blames himself or herself for the economic difficulty. The next section focuses on differences in the child-rearing practices of economically disadvantaged versus advantaged adults and discusses father-child relations as they are infiuenced by father-mother relations. Attention also is given to race differences in parenting behavior and the economic antecedents and correlates of child abuse. Consistent with our model, we conclude that psychological distress, demonstrated to be higher among adults experiencing economic hardship than those who are not, and higher among black adults (especially lower class) than white adults, partially accounts for economic and race differences in child rearing, as well as the link between economic stress and child abuse.

The Influence of Economic Hardship on Parent-Child Interaction and Relations Parenting in the context of poverty versus the context of affluence.—Because they are more emotionally distressed than their advantaged counterparts, it is not surprising that the capacity of poor parents for supportive, sensitive, and involved parenting is diminished. Numerous studies of both black and white adults, employing both interview and observational methods, report that mothers who are poor, as compared to their advantaged counterparts, are more likely to use power-assertive techniques in disciplinary encounters and are generally less supportive of their children. They value obedience more, are less likely to use reasoning, and more likely to use physical punishment as a means of disciplining and controlling the child. Lower-class parents are more likely to issue commands without explanation, less likely to consult the child about his or her wishes, and less likely to reward the child verbally for behaving in desirable ways. Poverty also has been associated with diminished expression of affection and lesser responsiveness to the socioemotional needs explicitly expressed by the child (Conger, McCarty, Yang, Lahey, & Kropp, 1984; Gecas, 1979; Hess, 1970; Kamii & Radin, 1967; Kriesberg, 1970; Langner, Herson, Greene, Jameson, & Goff, 1970; Peterson & Peters, 1985; Portes, Dunham, &

Williams, 1986; Wilson, 1974). McLoyd (1988) found that single economically disadvantaged mothers who reported higher levels of economic deprivation hit and scolded their children more frequently. Differences in the degree of emotional distress experienced by poor versus nonpoor parents as a result of varying levels of environmental stress probably contribute to these social class effects. Rewarding, explaining, consulting, and negotiating with the child require patience and concentration—qualities typically in short supply when parents feel harassed and overburdened. Even when untoward events occur in the context of a favorable economic situation, they can have a dampening effect on parent-child interaction. In one study of middle-class, well-educated mothers' interactions with their preschoolers, for example, Weinraub and Wolf (1983) found that mothers who experienced more sfressful life events were less nurturant toward their children and, in the case of single mothers, were less at ease, less spontaneous, and less responsive to their children's communications. Similarly, the occurrence of undesirable life events was found by Gersten et al. (1977) to correlate positively with affectively distant, restrictive, and punitive parenting. Even ephemeral, relatively minor hassles produce detectable changes in matemal behavior. Patterson's (1988) observations of mother-child dyads over the course of several days indicate that day-to-day fiuctuations in mothers' tendency to initiate and continue an aversive exchange with their children were systematically related to the daily frequency of hassles or crises the niother experienced. Even more compelling is a growing body of evidence directly linking parents' emotional states to their parenting behavior. We consider this evidence later. Observational data on poor fathers' interactions with their children are extremely limited; there are virtually no studies of socioeconomic differences in father-child interaction that include poor (lower-class) fathers. Some ethnographic studies suggest that the affective quality of poor fathers' interaction with their children depends on the child's age and whether the father and child live in the same household. Poor fathers have been reported to be highly indulgent with their infants but less involved and affectionate toward older children (Coles, 1971; Looff, 1971). Liebow (1967) concluded, on the basis of one observational study, that poor black fathers who lived with their own children were less affectionate and attentive toward

Vonnie C. McLoyd their children than nonresident fathers. However, belief in the necessity and propriety of physical punishment was common among both. Keeping the child "in line" and out of trouble are seen by poor black residential fathers as major parenting responsibilities, but whether these goals are related to the use of particular child-rearing practices is unknown (Robinson, Bailey, & Smith, 1985). The reasons for the differences in how resident and nonresident fathers treat their children may be related to the heavy psychological burden bome by poor resident fathers. In Liebow's view, the emotional distress that poverty engenders, combined with feelings of guilt because of failure in the male provider role, undermines patemal expressiveness. When living with his children, the poor father, on the one hand, publicly and privately affirms his commitment to the duties and responsibilities of fatherhood but, on the other hand, sharpens his sense of failure as provider. To lessen the damage to his selfesteem, the father distances himself from the child psychologically. This may also explain why poor resident fethers were more affectionate toward other men's children than toward their own. Nonresident poor fathers can afford to be solicitous and affectionate toward their children because contact is intermittent and, more importantly, according to Liebow, because they are less guilt-ridden—there is no longer the burdensome social obligation to be the child's primary provider. Liebow also observed a connection between mother-father relations and the relationships of these fathers with their children. In support of our analytic model, he concluded that the frequency and affective quality of contact between poor nonresident fathers and their children depend more on their relationships with the mothers of the children than on their relationships with the children themselves (Liebow, 1967). Among both the poor and more affluent, and among both blacks and whites, strains in the father-child relationship are greater among adolescent children than among younger children. In addition, studies of blacks, as well as studies of racially diverse samples, show increases in impairment of the fatherchild relationship and increases in negative attitudes toward the father as socioeconomic status declines (Gibbs, 1985; Langner et al., 1970). Nevertheless, the spectrum of fatherchild relationships among the poor is broad, ranging from no father-child contact at all to positive, satisfying, ongoing relations in the context of an intact family (Furstenberg, 1976; Furstenberg, Brooks-Gunn, & Morgan, 1987;

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Liebow, 1967; Ray & McLoyd, 1986; Schulz, 1968). Parenting in the context of econom,ic decline versus the context of economic stability.—Some of the differences in child-rearing practices between poor and more affluent parents parallel differences found between employed and unemployed parents. Jobless black parents are less likely than employed parents to believe that reasoning is the best way to control children (Kriesberg, 1970). Among black extended families in which unemployment is common, grandparents have been reported to value quick and decisive physical punishment because family welfare is perennially at stake and the effects of misbehavior of the child reverberate throughout the entire extended family network (Martin & Martin, 1978). More recently, parents who have experienced job loss or severe income loss, as compared to employed parents or parents whose income loss is less severe, have been found to be less nurturant and more punitive and inconsistent in their interactions with their children (Elder et al., 1985; Goldsmith & Radin, 1987; Lempers et al., 1989). In some families suffering hardship during the Great Depression, a vicious cycle was observed in which the harshness of the father was met with growing resentment and resistance from the child, especially if the child had replaced (or shared with the mother) the father's breadwinner role. In tum, the father became even more arbitrary and controlling (Bakke, 1940). Under these circumstances, economic loss oflen enhanced the affective status of the mother relative to the father, reduced the attractiveness of the father to children as a role model, companion, and confidant (especially among boys), and increased the tendency of children to identify with and seek the companionship of nonfamilial adults (Elder, 1974). As we intimated earlier, however, two fectors increased the likelihood of deterioration in father-child relations following economic loss, namely, strained, conflict-ridden, or affectively distant father-child relations prior to the setback and strained marital relations (Komarovsky, 1940). The mother's prominence in the child's life made it possible for her to shape the child's behavior and attitude toward the father. If she lost respect for the husband, held him in contempt, and blamed him for the disruption in their lives, she was unlikely to present a sympathetic interpretation of the father's situation to the

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child or to encourage child behaviors that acknowledged the father's authority (Elder, 1974; Ginsburg, 1942). Within this context, sons, in particular, were likely to adopt an irreverent attitude toward the father, setting the stage for father-child confiict. Moreover, the mother's behavior toward the father constrained the father's response to the son. If she was distant and disapproving of the father, he tended to be more hostile, erratic, or indifferent toward the son than if the marital bond was secure and supportive (Elder, 1979). It is likely that fathers were displacing their anger toward the mother to the child. A more recent investigation of white rural middle-class families experiencing economic hardship bears this out (Elder et al., 1989). Adaptations to hardship fueled men's irritability and hostility toward their wives and this, in tum, led to hostility toward the child. The strain of adaptations had no direct impact on the father's affect toward the son. Researchers studying other issues have discussed the interrelatedness of conjugal and parental relations. In general, harmonious marital relations co-vary with sensitive, nurturant parent-child interactions, whereas dissension in the parent dyad is associated with conflictual parent-child relations (Herrenkohl & Herrenkohl, 1981). Recent research findings based on selfreports are peculiarly inconsistent. Today's middle-class and working-class parents rarely report deterioration of their relationships with their children following job loss when directly asked (Perrucci & Targ, 1988; Perrucci, Targ, Perrucci, & Targ, 1987; Rayman & Bluestone, cited in Cunningham, 1983; Thomas, McCabe, & Berry, 1980). In fact, they are as likely (or more likely) to report improvement in relations with the child following job loss. These flndings must be regarded as tenuous, though, because many of the studies do not include comparisons with continuously employed workers. In contrast to these more benign reports from parents, evidence of negative effects has been found when unemployed and reemployed groups are compared, and estimates of parent-child conflict are based on reports from children rather than parents. In a recent investigation by Flanagan (in press), adolescents whose parents were currently unemployed because of job loss reported more conflict with their parents than those whose parents lost jobs and found new employment. Other researchers have found no relation between the father's employment status and children's reports of family problems (Buss & Redbum,

1983), but these reports may not refiect the quality of parent-child relationships per se (for a fuller discussion of this issue, see McLoyd, 1989). In black families, the effects of unemployment on the child's attitude toward the father seem to differ as a function of social class, and this difference may be attributable to differences in causal attribution. Heiss (1975) reported that, in black lower-class families, patemal unemployment had no effect on the child's attitudes toward the father, whereas in middle-class families, patemal unemployment undermined the child's esteem for the father. Perhaps unemployed fathers are more likely to be taken for granted in lower-status groups, the father neither gaining nor losing admiration because unemployment is so commonplace in this social stratum. Its prevalence also may reinforce the belief that the father's employment difficulties are due to race and class discrimination rather than to enduring personal inadequacies (Heiss, 1975; Schwartz & Henderson, 1964). It cannot be determined from Heiss's study whether differences in causal attributions or differences in fathers' reactions to unemployment (or other factors) account for the differential impact of unemployment on children's attitudes toward their fathers. Until Heiss's findings are replicated, they should be interpreted cautiously. As noted earlier, unemployment is associated with higher levels of psychological distress in working-class men compared to middle-class men (Buss & Redbum, 1983). On this basis, unemployment would be expected to result in greater rather than less impairment of father-child relations in lowerstatus families. Most of the investigations reviewed in this section have contrasted economic contexts in order to identify the changes that economic hardship produces in parenting. A different approach to studying the relation between parenting and economic contexts involves identifying a particular pattem of parenting behavior and documenting the contexts conducive to it. Essentially, this is the approach taken by researchers who study child abuse, the focus of the next section. Child abuse: An extreme form of punitive parenting.—Child abuse represents an extreme form of punitive parenting that occurs more frequently in families experiencing economic decline than in families with stable resources (Garbarino, 1976; Parke & Collmer, 1975). Analyzing data over a 30-month period, Steinberg, Catalano, and Dooley (1981) found that increases in child abuse were pre-

Vonnie C. McLoyd ceded by periods of high job loss. In a study conducted by Straus, Gelles, and Steinmetz (1980), the rate of child abuse among fathers employed part time was almost twice £is high as the rate for fathers employed full time. PaternfJ unemployment and economic loss can lead to child abuse through a number of pathways. Because less money is available, unemployed parents are not in a good position to "bribe" their children into following orders or wishes with tangible goods, to withhold goods and activities as a means of punishment, or to offer desirable substitutes for undesirable activities (Bakke, 1940; Caplovitz, 1979; Komarovsky, 1940). These circumstances, combined with frustration and depletion of emotional resources brought on by financial strain, may set the stage for unemployed parents to become physically abusive. Other factors conducive to child abuse in the context of economic loss include (a) fathers' increased responsibilities for the primary care and discipline of their children (Radin & Goldsmith, 1989), resulting in greater awareness of children's negative attributes and a less favorable perception of them (Johnson & Abramovitch, 1985); (b) a heightened need among these fathers to exercise power because of a real or perceived status loss; and (c) as suggested earlier, an increase in marital disputes and displacement of anger onto the child, especially if the child forms a coalition with the mother (Herrenkohl, Herrenkohl, & Egolf, 1983; Parke & Collmer, 1975). During the Depression, children whose fathers lost the greatest amount of income were most likely to perceive the mother as someone to rely on and most likely to align themselves with the mother when the parents quarreled (Elder, 1974). Child abuse is reported to be more prevalent among the poor as well (e.g., Daniel, Hampton, & Newberger, 1983; Garbarino, 1976), and several life conditions and circumstances associated with poverty appear to explain this. In their study of black families, for instance, Daniel et al. (1983) found that abusive mothers not only were more likely than nonabusive mothers to be very poor but suffered more losses due to recent deaths in their femilies, more recent changes in their life situations, and generally more negative family stress. Even within poor abusive families, material deprivation is associated with severity of maltreatment (Horowitz & Wolock, 1985). Some have claimed that the relation between child abuse and social class is spurious owing to bias in detection and in the records

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of child welfare agencies typically used to estimate the occurrence of child abuse. It is asserted that poor people's behavior is more open to scrutiny (e.g., the poor have more contact with public agencies and are less likely to live in isolated single-family dwellings), making detection of child abuse more likely among them than among more affluent individuals. Known cases of child abuse, it is argued, are more likely to be reported to agencies and agencies are more likely to intervene if the family is poor (Wright, 1982). While it is true that child abuse is not confined to people who are poor, there are no solid empirical data clarifying the extent to which these biases account for the overrepresentation of the poor among reported cases of abuse (Horowitz & Wolock, 1985; Pelton, 1978). What is clear, though, is a reliable bias in labeling child abuse depending on the socioeconomic background of the child. Using an experimental design, Turbett and O'Toole (cited in Gelles, 1980) presented physicians with a mock case of an injured child, varying the social class of the fictitious child. Physicians were significantly more likely to label "lower-class children" as abused children than "middle-class children." Nevertheless, given the high agreement among aggregate and individual studies, as well as the established link between economic loss and punitive parenting, we believe that a causal relation exists between poverty and child abuse, although biases of the sort mentioned may infiate the estimates. Characteristics of the child.—How childem are treated by economically deprived parents depends partly on the child's temperament and physical appearance. Rutter's (1979) research with economically deprived families revealed that temperamentally easy children were much less likely than children with difficult temperaments to be the target of parental criticism and harshness. Child temperament also conditioned how fathers experiencing economic loss during the Great Depression behaved toward their children. Children who were temperamentally difficult at 18 months were more likely to be disciplined in an extreme (severe punishment or indifference) and arbitrary manner by financially pressed fathers 3 years later. This was true even when the father's earlier irritability (i.e., when the child was 18 months old) was controlled (Elder et al., 1985; Elder, Caspi, & Nguyen, 1986). Studies of child abuse also have identified the child's temperament as a factor that appears to elicit maltreatment (Belsky, 1980).

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Research with parents who have sustained heavy economic losses as well as investigations of abusive parents reveal that the risk of maltreatment also is heightened if the child is physically unattractive. Perhaps this is because physically unattractive children have lesser parental value or are less selfconfident and assertive as a consequence of lower self-esteem (Belsky, 1980; Elder et al., 1985, 1986). Black-white differences in parenting behavior.—Black children are three times as likely as white children to die of child abuse (Children's Defense Fund, 1985), but considerable disagreement exists about whether race differences exist in the prevalence of child abuse independent of socioeconomic factors such as income and employment status (Cazenave & Straus, 1979). As with lowerclass status, minority status appears to bias physicians toward attributing child injuries to abuse. In the Turbett and O'Toole (cited in Hampton, 1986) study mentioned in the previous section, physicians' attributions of major injuries to the fictitious child increased by 33% if the child was identified as black rather than white. Hampton (1986) analyzed child maltreatment cases seen in hospitals in terms of whether they were reported initially to child protective services as alleged victims of child abuse or came to the attention of the hospital through some other source. Black children were more likely than white children to be reported to child protection agencies, as were children who lived in singleparent families and families that received public assistance. These two investigations suggest that, indeed, bias may result in child abuse estimates that are inflated for blacks and underrepresentative for whites. Evidence from a number of studies based on observations, self-reports, and responses to vignettes suggests that black parents are more severe, punitive, and powêr assertive in the discipline of their children than white parents of similar socioeconomic status (Allen, 1985; Blau, 1981; Hale, 1982; Portes et al., 1986). Black parents also report using arbitrary rules more often and psychologically oriented discipline techniques less often (e.g., guilt induction) (Durrett, O'Bryant, & Pennebaker, 1975). A different picture emerges from other studies, however. Both Baumrind (1972) and Bartz and Levine (1978) found blacks disposed to a style of discipline that was firm, but supportive and nonrejecting. Data conceming race differences in parents' independence and responsibility demands also are mixed. In some studies, blacks have been

found to expect the child to overcome the dependency of infancy and assume responsibility at an earlier age than whites (Bartz & Levine, 1978), whereas in other studies this difference is reversed (Allen, 1985). Some scholars have asserted that the putative tendency toward power assertion and the values associated with it (i.e., obedience and respect for elders) are culturally rooted and can be traced to traditional African values (Hale, 1982; Peters & Massey, 1983). It is also plausible that this child-rearing pattem was fostered by the experience of slavery (Wortman, 1981; Wright, 1982). Furthermore, it may have been reinforced subsequently by stressful circumstances in the lives of blacks (Dowhrenwend & Dowhrenwend, 1969; Powell, 1982). Environmental stressors also may influence parents' independence expectations and demands. Note, however, that even though some investigations flnd race differences after social class is controlled, use of traditional social class taxonomies to control for social class does not necessarily equalize blacks and whites in terms of material deprivation. In some investigations, blacks have been found to suffer more material deprivation than whites of similar socioeconomic status (Blau, 1981; Horowitz & Wolock, 1985). In Horowitz and Wolock's (1985) study of abusing families, for example, all of the subjects were AFDC recipients, but blacks experienced greater material deprivation and environmental difficulties. They reportedly inflicted greater physical harm on their children than did whites. This difference, as well as race differences in the use of power assertion by nonabusing parents, may be partly due to inequality in material resources and environmental supports and, in tum, differential levels of psychological distress. The robust interactive effect between race and social class on psychological distress (Kessler & Neighbors, 1986) endorses the view that psychological distress is an important source of race differences in the parenting behaviors of low-income adults. Numerous other conditions, however, also may explain these differences. For example, black lower-class women, compared to white lower- and middle-class women, begin childbearing earlier, have more children, and have children who are spaced closer together—factors that increase emotional strain and foster parenting that relies more on coercion than negotiation and reasoning (Blau, 1981; Glick, 1981; Herrenkohl & Herrenkohl, 1981; Longfellow, Zelkowitz, & Saunders, 1982; Myers & King, 1983; Pearlin & Johnson, 1977). Thus, a co-

Vonnie C. McLoyd 327 gent analysis of black-white differences in parenting must take into account cultural, demographic, environmental, and psychological factors. In summary, existing research supports the conclusion that poverty and economic loss generally result in more punitive and less nurturant, supportive behavior by parents, especially if their children are temperamentally difficult and physically unattractive. This conclusion is buttressed by research on child abuse. The relation between economic hardship and punitive, inconsistent parenting behavior seems to stem from increased levels of anxiety, irritabilify, and depression experienced by economically deprived parents. Economic haurdship also can result in emotional estrangement between fathers and sons, but this outcome appears to depend greatly on the mother's attitude toward the father and whether the father is blamed for the economic difficulfy. Two distinct pattems of child rearing have been associated with black parents—one that combines strictness and high support and another marked by power assertion, punitiveness, and arbitrariness. The determinants of these pattems are unclear, but there is reason to believe that childbearing history and related environmental factors, psychological distress, and cultural factors are involved in the latter pattem. The next section brings together research supporting the assumptions in our analytic model about the key mechanisms by which poverfy and economic loss adversely affect children. Specifically, it reviews studies of the relation between child-rearing practices and psychological distress in parents and investigations of punitive, nonsupportive, and inconsistent parenting in relation to children's socioemotional functioning. These linkages are underscored in a discussion of the role of social networks in easing the emotional distress of parents, tempering harsh parental treatment, and, in tum, promoting socioemotional development in economically disadvantaged children. Linkages between Parents' Emotional State, Parenting Behavior, and Socioemotional Functioning in the Child Parental emotional state as a determinant of parenting behavior.—A growing body of data, most from mothers of infants and preschoolers, directly ties psirental punitiveness, inconsistency, and unresponsiveness to negative emotional states in the parent. These data are consistent with studies showing that

parents respond to economic loss with increased irritabilify, hostilify, and depression and, in tum, with punitive and erratic behavior toward the child (Elder, 1979; Elder er al., 1984, 1985; Lempers et al., 1989). In Conger et al.'s (1984) observational study of black and white mothers and children (mean age = 7.5 years) from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds, mothers who reported high emotional distress, as compared to mothers reporting lower stress, exhibited fewer positive behaviors (e.g., hugs, praise, supportive statements) and more negative behaviors toward the child (e.g., threats, derogatory statements, slaps). Similarly, matemal depression and emotional distress have been found to be associated with physical abuse, use of aversive, coercive discipline, and diminished matemal sensitivity and satisfaction with parenting (Cmic & Greenberg, 1987; Daniel et al., 1983; Patterson, 1986). Heightened depression and psychosomatic problems appear to explain some of the changes in parenting following divorce, an event promoted by economic hardship. During and following divorce, custodial mothers often become selfinvolved, uncommunicative, nonsupportive, and inconsistently punitive toward their children (Hetherington et al., 1989). The relation between psychological distress and parenting behavior exists within samples of poor individuals too. Poor parents whose total stress burden is high are less happy and less involved in the activities of their preschool and adolescent children than poor parents who experience fewer stressors (Wilson, 1974). High levels of psychological distress also dispose poor adolescent mothers to custodial and unstimulating contact with their infants (Crockenberg, 1987). McLoyd and Wilson (in press) found in their recent study of economically disadvantaged black and white mothers that those who were more distressed psychologically perceived their parenting as more difficult, were less nurturant of their children, and discussed money matters and personal problems with their children more frequently than mothers reporting less psychological distress. Additional evidence conceming the child-rearing behaviors of mothers who are psychologically distressed is provided by Longfellow et al. (1982) and Zelkowitz's (1982) investigation of poor black and white mothers of 5—7-yearolds. Longfellow et al. reported that the more highly stressed and depressed the mothers were, the less responsive they were to their children's dependency needs and the more likely they were to be hostile and dominating.

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Highly depressed mothers yelled and hit their children more frequently and relied less on reasoning and loss of privileges in disciplining them. They also demanded more extensive involvement in household maintenance from their children and placed greater responsibilify on them. In a similar vein, Zelkowitz (1982) reported that poor mothers who were anxious and depressed were more likely to expect immediate compliance from their children, although they were less consistent in following through on their requests if their children did not comply. They were more likely to see their matemal role as teaching socially appropriate behavior and valued obedience and "good" behavior more highly. These mothers were not unaware of how negative psychological states affected their parenting behavior. They reported that among the hardest things to do when feeling depressed were being nurturant, patient, and involved with their children (Longfellow et al., 1982). These mothers also seemed to be aware that the parenting strategies they were most prone to use when depressed were, in the main, ineffective and changeworthy. Thus, psychological overload, rather than ignorance of the principles of effective parenting (as suggested by others, e.g., Piuck, 1975), may explain differences between poor and nonpoor parents' sfyle of interaction with their children. The studies reviewed up to this point have assessed depressive affect on the basis of self-reports on symptom checklists. An increasing number of studies have examined the parenting behavior of depressed (or manic-depressive) mothers identifled on the basis of clinical diagnosis. In general, these studies point to a pattem of matemal unresponsiveness, nonsupportiveness, and hostile coerciveness toward the child. When interacting with their preschool children, depressed mothers are more critical, less positive in affective expression, less responsive to the child's overtures, and less active and spontaneous (Davenport, Zahn-Waxler, Adland, & Mayfield, 1984; Downey & Coyne, 1989; Radke-Yarrow, Richters, & Wilson, in press). They are more likely to choose conflict-resolution strategies that require little effort, such as dropping initial demands when the child is resistant or enforcing obedience unilaterally rather than negotiating with the child (Kochanska, Kuczynski, Radke-Yarrow, & Walsh, 1987). The more severe the mother's depression, the more likely she is to slap and shout at the child to signal disapproval and the more negative is her perception of the

child (Panaccione & Wahler, 1986). The latter finding bears striking resemblance to Johnson and Abramovitch's (1985) finding in a study of unemployed blue-collar and lower-level professional fathers who were primary caretakers of their preschool children. The longer they were unemployed the more negatively they described their children. Parenting and socioemotional functioning in the child.—Children whose parents have experienced job loss, severe income loss, or periods of unemployment have more socioemotional problems than their economically advantaged counterparts. These problems include depression, loneliness (Lempers et al., 1989; Wemer & Smith, 1982), emotional sensitivify (Elder et al., 1985), social withdrawal (Buss & Redbum, 1983), low self-esteem (Coopersmith, 1967; Isralowitz & Singer, 1986), and behavior problems (Flanagan, 1988; Wemer & Smith, 1982). There is direct evidence that at least some of these problems in white children are mediated by punitive and harsh parental discipline brought on by economic loss. For example, in Lempers et al.'s (1989) study of white working- and middle-class adolescents (grades 9— 12), economic loss led to higher rates of adolescent delinquency and drug use through increasing inconsistent and punitive discipline by parents (as reported by the adolescents). Transgression-proneness is also higher among children living in families that have experienced economic loss than among children in families that have experienced an economic gain, but only when parental acceptance of the child is low (Galambos & Silbereisen, 1987b). Sex differences have been noted in the degree to which children are vulnerable to the indirect effects of economic loss. Among children who were 1 year old or less at the beginning of the Depression (younger cohort), severe income loss increased the frequency of temp>er tantrums and the tendency toward quarrelsome, negativistic, and explosive behavior 5 to 10 years later, but only through the increasing arbitrariness of the father's discipline (Elder et al., 1984). Negative effects were especially pronounced among impoverished boys, as compared to nondeprived boys, apparently because mothers in deprived families were less supportive and protective of sons than mothers in nondeprived families. (By comparison, deprived girls received more matemal support than nondeprived girls.) These differences continued into adolescence, when deprived boys, as compared to nondeprived boys, man-

Vonnie C. McLoyd ifested developmental limitations (e.g., feeling victimized and cheated by life, selfdefeating behavior, low goal orientation). Deprived girls, on the other hand, were more goal oriented, self-confident, and assertive than nondeprived girls (Elder et al., 1979). Among children who were 8 to 9 years old when the economy crashed (older cohort), however, it was girls, rather than boys, who fered poorly. Adolescent girls in economically deprived families suffered considerable socioemotional distress in response to the father's harshness (e.g., moodiness, hypersensitivify, feelings of inadequacy, lowered aspirations). In contrast, the functioning of deprived adolescent boys, compared to nondeprived adolescent boys, refiected a pattem of resiliency and ego strength. Whereas the father's behavior was predictive of socioemotional problems among adolescent girls, adolescent boys' functioning was unaffected by their fathers' behavior. The sex difference in father mediation, may have resulted because fathers directed more punitive behavior toward their adolescent daughters than their adolescent sons owing to the daughters' lesser size and strength and/or greater acceptance of such abusive behavior (Elder et al., 1985). It also may be explained by adolescent girls' greater exposure to marital conflict and abusive behavior as compared to adolescent boys' exposure. Adolescent girls spent more time in the home than boys doing chores to compensate for the absence of mothers who took jobs to supplement femily income; boys more often found employment outside the home (Elder, 1974; Elder et al., 1985). An obvious and important question concems whether younger children are more vulnerable than older children to the indirect effects of economic loss. Few data are available to address this issue. Researchers focusing on contemporary families experiencing economic loss have not examined differences in mediational processes as a function of the child's developmental status (Elder et al., 1989; Galambos & Silbereisen, 1987a; Lempers et al., 1989). Elder's longitudinal research with Depression era families, however, was used to explore this question. Children's developmental status at the time the economy crashed did not emerge as a consistent determinant of their vulnerabilify to fathers' harsh and arbitrary discipline. Cohort comparisons by sex revealed that boys were more vulnerable to the indirect effects of economic loSs if economic loss occurred earlier rather than later. The reverse was true for girls. Factors that would appear to increase

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the young child's vulnerabilify to negative paternal behavior, including increased presence in the home, longer exposure to economic hardship, and limited cognitive skills that encourage feelings of self-blame, apparently were counteracted by exceptionally high levels of matemsil support to young daughters. On the other hand, older daughters' presence in the home (owing to their domestic responsibilities) apparently exposed them to high levels of patemal maltreatment, without countervailing matemal support (Elder, 1974, 1979). Poverfy has been linked to a variefy of socioemotional problems in both black and white children of varying ages, including such difficulties as depression (Gibbs, 1986), strained peer relations (Langner et al., 1970), low self-confidence, conduct disorders, and higher levels of overall social maladaptation and psychological disorder (Kellam, Ensminger, & Tumer, 1977; Langner et al., 1969; Levinson, 1969; Myers & King, 1983). Somatic complaints also are positively associated with economic deprivation (McLoyd, 1988). Existing research does not provide direct evidence conceming whether these negative effects are moderated by age or mediated by parental behavior, reflecting the adevelopmental and outcome-oriented, rather than process-oriented, paradigms dominating the psychological study of poor and black children (McLoyd & Randolph, 1984; Washington & McLoyd, 1982). There is reason to believe, however, that parenting behavior directly affects these child outcomes, in view of findings from studies of families experiencing economic loss and evidence that child-rearing practices more prevalent among impoverished parents are predictive of many of these socioemotional problems. We consider some of the latter below, drawing from different bodies of literature. Many of the studies mentioned include, but are rarely limited to, black children. Some samples are comprised primarily of children experiencing economic hardship, while others are more balanced socioeconomically. A vast literature exists conceming the consequences for children's socioemotional functioning of nonsupportive behavior in parents, defined as low levels of behavior that make the child feel comfortable in the presence of the parent and communicate to the child that he or she is basically accepted and approved (Rollins & Thomas, 1979). Research consistently shows that children whose parents are nonsupportive have lower selfesteem (Coopersmith, 1967; Gecas, 1979; Rol-

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lins & Thomas, 1979) and more psychological disorders, exhibit more antisocial aggression and behavioral problems (Rollins & Thomas, 1979), and are more likely to show arrested ego development (Powers, Hauser, & Kilner, 1989). Both poverfy and economic decline are associated with problems in children's peer relations (Elder, 1974; Langner et al., 1970), and this may stem from the sfyles of interaction that children leam from their parents. Children of parents experiencing economic hardship are more likely to be exposed to power-assertive and punitive discipline by the parent and, in tum, may imitate the parent by handling interpersonal confiict with coercion rather than negotiation (Downey & Coyne, 1989; Rollins & Thomas, 1979). Furthermore, with less sustained positive interaction with the parent, the child has fewer opportunities to leam and master verbal and instrumental strategies that help in initiating and maintaining positive peer interaction. In a study of preschoolers, Parke, MacDonald, Beitel, and Bhavnagri (1988) found that low patemal engagement and physical play as well as infrequent matemal verbal interchange were negatively associated with peer popularify, helpfulness, leadership, involvement, and communication skills in preschool children but positively associated with undesirable attributes such as apprehensiveness, inabilify to get along with others, and unwillingness to share. Although bidirectional processes clearly are involved, these findings suggest that parents play a significant role in the development of social incompetence. Work with families of antisocial boys is particularly instructive conceming this issue (Patterson, 1986). Preadolescent and adolescent children are at high risk for becoming antisocial and highly aggressive if they are temperamentally difficult and have parents who are highly irritable and erratic. Parents of these children are inconsistent in their punishment of misbehavior and tend to threaten, nag, and badger their children in disciplinary confrontations, but seldom follow through on their threats. Occasionally, they physically assault the child. Divorce research also supports the basic notion that harsh, inconsistent discipline fosters socioemotional problems in the child. Depression, aggressiveness, noncompliance, acting-out, and peer confiict among children of divorced parents oftentimes are responses to negative changes in the parents' socialization practices following the divorce (Hethedngton et al., 1989; Wallerstein, 1988; Weiss, 1979).

Young children of depressed parents are at increased risk of some of the same socioemotional problems found to be prevalent among economically deprived children (i.e., conduct disorders, social maladjustment, depression). Harsh discipline is one of the key mediators between parental depression and child maladjustment (Downey & Coyne, 1989). Many of the socioemotional problems of poor children may be similarly caused. The critical role of parenting behavior is underscored by research demonstrating that child abuse is a more powerful predictor of child maladjustment than whether or not the parent is depressed (Downey & Coyne, 1989; JCashani, Shekim, Burk, & Beck, 1987). Children who have been physically or emotionally abused manifest numerous socioemotional problems (e.g, passivity, withdrawal, negativify, low self-esteem, impaired social relations) (Aber & Cicchetti, 1984). Egeland and Sroufe (1981) conducted one of the most cited longitudinal studies of the sequelae of child abuse, focusing on a sample of poor urban families. Children who suffered physical abuse, compared with children who had not been abused, were less securely attached to their caregivers at 18 months and exhibited significantly more anger, aggression, fmstration, and noncompliance and less positive affect in a mother-child problem-solving task at 24 months. Chronic verbal abuse (i.e., constantly flnding fault with child, extremely harsh criticism) combined with physical abuse was predictive of fmstration, anger, and noncompliance in the child. Children of mothers who were detached and psychologically unavailable to the child (e.g., lack of responsiveness, passive rejection of child) and in some cases physically abusive were less securely attached at 18 months and displayed less positive affect than children of mothers who provided adequate care. In sum, there is direct evidence that anxiefy, depression, and irritabilify—states heightened by economic hardship—increase the tendency of parents to be punitive, erratic, unilateral, and generally nonsupportive of their children. In line with differences that have been found in the child-directed behaviors of impoverished versus more affluent parents, psychological strain encourages the parent to adopt disciplinary strategies that require less effort (e.g., physical punishment, commanding without explanation, reliance on authorify) rather than more (e.g., reasoning, explaining, negotiating). Depression, in particular, diverts the parent's attention from the child and fosters a tendency to attend dispro-

Vonnie C. McLoyd porbonately to child behaviors seen as negative by the parent These parenting behaviors, especially in the extreme, have been found in longitudinal studies to be critical antecedents of socioemotional problems in children. A discussion of the effects of economic hardship on parental and child functioning would be glaringly incomplete without consideration of fectors that buffer negative effects. We have already touched on some of these factors but present a more focused and in-depth discussion in the following section. Parents' social networks as moderators of punitive and arbitrary discipline.—A burgeoning body of research indicates that social networks provide parents with support and assistance that often improve their dispositions and, in tum, lessen their tendency toward coercively disciplining their children. Such networks may also exercise sanctions and controls against excessively harsh parenting behavior (Cochran & Brassard, 1979). In the discussion that follows, studies of black parents experiencing economic hardship are emphasized. When the data base on this group is inadequate to support the discussion, however, we bring in research on impoverished white parents and parents living under more favorable economic conditions. Virtually all of these studies focus on mothers, but we assume that most reported effects are generalizable to fathers. To the extent that social networks temper the negative emotional and behavioral pattems associated with economic hardship and foster parental nurturance and consistency, they may indirectly promote positive functioning in the child. This assertion is extrapolated from research with both black and non-black families indicating that poor parents who are supportive but firm and consistent disciplinarians are more likely to have children who function well socioemotionally and academically than those who are punitive, power assertive, and erratic (Clark, 1983; Garmezy, Masten, & Tellegen, 1984; Masten et al., in press; Nuechterlein, 1970; Wemer & Smith, 1982). Moreover, the bulk of evidence suggests that social networks in the context of the extended family have more indirect than direct effects on the child through their effects on the mother (Wilson, 1989). 1. Em.otional support.—Emotional support typically is provided in the context of intimate relationships and friendships. It may include companionship, expressions of affection, and the availabilify of a confidant. We indicated in an earlier section that social sup-

331

port reduces symptomatology among adults experiencing economic decline and poverfy. More relevant here are those studies focusing specifically on the effects of support on the socialization behavior and attitudes of financially hfird-pressed parents. In investigations of poor mothers (black and white) and economically diverse samples that include mothers of young children receiving welfare, those receiving higher levels of emotional support report feeling less overwhelmed by their parenting situation, more gratified by the maternal role, and more satisfied with their offspring (Cmic & Greenberg, 1987; Zur-Szpiro & Longfellow, 1982). Colletta (1981), for example, found that emotional support was the strongest predictor of matemal behavior (other kinds of support included child care, task assistance, material, financial, and informational support) among both black and white adolescent mothers, about half of whom were on welfare. Mothers with high levels of emotional support reported being less likely to nag, scold, ridicule, or threaten their children. Low levels of support were predictive of matemal hostilify, indifference, and rejection of the child. The relation between emotional support and matemal behavior was strongest when the adolescent's own family was the source of the support, as compared to support from friends or the mother's partner or spouse. Observational data substantiate findings based on matemal reports. Intimate or emotional support is predictive of positive maternal affect and mother-infant interaction in middle-class samples (Cmic & Greenberg, 1987) and in samples that include poor as well as more affluent mothers (Cmic, Greenberg, Ragozin, Robinson, & Basham, 1983). In other investigations, satisfaction with emotional support, but not actual amount of emotional support received, has been found to be associated with positive mother-child communication and matemal nurturance (Weintraub & Wolf, 1983). 2. Informational support and role modeling.—Cotterell (1986) examined the relation between qualify of child rearing and informational support, deflned as useful information and advice about managing one's home and children. Informational support was positively associated with matemal warmth, mother-child play, matemal teaching and cognitive stimulation of the child, and frustration tolerance. Collaborative child care, especially between a neophyte and an experienced mother, may foster sensitive parenting behaviors because it provides a favorable context for

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informational support and positive role modeling. Black grandmothers' knowledge about infant development is a strong predictor of their adolescent daughters' (who are mothers) knowledge on the same topic. Furthermore, black grandmothers have been found to interact with their grandbabies less punitively, more reciprocally, and more responsively than the teenage mothers of these infants (Stevens, 1984). Observation of such behaviors may enhance parenting skills in young mothers. Although other research suggests that black grandmothers are more restrictive and physically punitive toward the child as compared to their daughters (Martin & Martin, 1978; Wilson, 1986), this pattem appears not to hold when the mother is a teenager and the grandchild is an infant, perhaps because teenage mothers are less knowledgeable and more unrealistic about child development and parenting than older mothers (King & FuUard, 1982) or because grandmothers are more indulgent with infants than with older children. Blau (1981) reported that black mothers' exposure to white friends and co-workers was associated with increased investment in their children (e.g., positive interaction during infancy and early childhood such as reading to the child, taking the child along when shopping or visiting friends) and, in turn, more positive intellectual development in the children. Increased opportunify for association with the purveyors of white mainstream culture, contended Blau, enhanced black parents' efficacy in socializing the kinds of competence valued in white mainstream culture, in part because it pressured black parents to forswear traditional "black" child-rearing practices and embrace those modeled by the purveyors. It is unclear whether the relation Blau found is due to direct exchanges of information about child-rearing, modeling, assistance in child-rearing responsibilities, or a variefy of other factors. Moreover, other interpretations of these data are plausible, selfselection being the most obvious. The childrearing ideologies and practices of black parents who select into integrated settings may be systematically different from those who select into segregated contexts. Dill (1980) goes further by showing that interracial contact can have bidirectional effects. In her ethnographic study of black women who worked for white families as domestics, some of the women said they admired their employers' tendency to talk, reason, and negotiate with their children and, consistent with Blau's argument, emulated

this behavior in dealing with their own children. Nonetheless, they disapproved of the tendency of employers' children to "talk back" and question their parents' authorify. Further, they saw themselves as teaching parenting skills to the employers via modeling and direct instruction and, as such, inserted their own values into the employers' parentchild relationships. These black women set rules and regulations to govern the white children's behavior and often were admired by their employers for their child-rearing effectiveness. Interracial contact probably has myriad effects on the parenting behaviors of black adults, depending on the nature of the contact and the ecological context. 3. Parenting support.—Parenting support refers to the provision of assistance in the parenting role and typically includes help with child care. It can be given with regularify in the context of an ongoing relationship, such as collaborative child-care arrangements, or sporadically on an ad hoc basis. Numerous studies bear out its positive effects on matemal behavior and mother-child interaction. In Crockenberg's (1987) observational study of an economically deprived sample of adolescent mothers, some of whom were black, matemal sensitivify and accessibilify to the baby increased with an increase in the number of family members who helped with various household and child-care chores. In addition, mothers with higher levels of daily support from family and nonfamily members responded more quickly when their babies cried than mothers whose daily support was lower. Low-income divorced mothers who receive more parenting help are less restrictive and punitive when dealing with their children. Furthermore, matemal satisfaction with support has been found to be positively associated with promptness in responding to the child's attention demands and a tendency to repeat requests rather than immediately punish the child for noncompliance; satisfaction is negatively associated with punitiveness, use of physical punishment, and imposition of strict rules in the household (Colletta, 1979). This is consistent with reports from both black and white lowincome adolescent mothers that they are warmer and less rejecting of their preschool children vi'hen given an opportunify to break continuous interactions with them for more than 2 hours (Colletta, 1981). Parenting support also increases the mother's abilify to give effective directions to the child and get the child to conform to rules (Weinraub & Wolf, 1983). Among poor black teenagers, greater

Vonnie C. McLoyd network support also appears to encourage help-seeking from extended family members in solving child-rearing problems (Stevens, 1988).

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combination of psychological and communify factors.

Other research contrasting neighborhoods in terms of social rather than demoRecent research has begun to clarify the graphic characteristics shows links to the conditions under which social and parenting qualify of child rearing. In a unique and caresupport have greater potency. Work to date fully controlled study, Garbarino and Shersuggests that support relationships have more man (1980) compared the social ecology of impact on emotional and parental functioning two white neighborhoods that differed greatly when psychological distress is relatively low in the rate of child abuse and neglect but (Crockenberg, 1987), during times of major had similar socioeconomic and demographic life b-ansitions (Cmic & Greenberg, 1987), profiles. Results supported their hypothesis and when the source of stress is an event that these two neighborhoods represented rather than a chronic condition (Dressier, contrasting environments for child rearing. 1985). The relation between social and par- Mothers in the low-risk area, as compared to enting support and psychological distress is those in the high-risk area, reported more exfurther complicated by the fact that support is changes among neighbors in general, more sometimes provided by persons who also are exchanges of child supervision, increased use major sources of distress, reducing the effec- of other neighborhood children as playmates, tiveness of the support (Belle, 1982; Crocken- and a larger number of people who took an berg, 1987). Similarly, as several researchers interest in their child's welfare. Furthermore, who study black families have pointed out, they rated their neighborhood as a better embeddedness in an extended family net- place to rear children, the availabilify of child work, while generally providing economic care more positively, and their children as and psychological benefits, is not without its easier to raise, as compared to mothers in the psychological and material costs. These costs high-risk neighborhood. This is consistent include feeling burdened by obligations to with other research with black and white the extended family, feeling exploited by • farriilies demonstrating that, compared to those who want more than they need or de- nonabusing parents, parents who abuse their serve, disagreement conceming the need for children are more isolated from formal and and/or use of aid, and disapproval by ex- informal support networks, are less likely to tended family members of potential marital have a relative living nearby, and have lived partners and child-rearing practices and deci- in their neighborhoods for shorter periods of sions (Stack, 1974; Wilson, 1986). time (Cazenave & Straus, 1979; Daniel et al., 1983; Gelles, 1980; Trickett & Susman, 1988). Researchers have reported relations between the qualify of parenting and a number When network members live within walkof communify characteristics thought to affect ing distance, mothers receive more day-to-day it. For example, in a study of four communi- parenting assistance, and those who see netties in Australia, Cotterell (1986) found that work members more frequently report more degree of transience and proportion of older child assistance in emergency and nonemeradults in the communities were negatively gency situations (Belle, 1982). Moreover, related to cognitive stimulation, matemal parents who report high levels of neighborwarmth, and overall qualify of child rearing. hood support are more satisfied with parAccording to Cotterell, these two characteris- enting and express more positive affect tics influenced parenting behavior through toward their infants (Cmic & Greenberg, their effect on the pool of same-age network 1987). Child-keeping, wherein a mother temmembers available to the mother. Among porarily shifts the residence of her children, black mothers who are poor, physical pun- most often to her female kin, in response to ishment as a child management technique changes in her life was found to be common is used more frequently among those who among the lower-class black community perceive their neighborhoods to be highly studied by Stack (1974). Since this practice dangerous and rife with negative influences gives the mother a "break" during particucompared to those who describe their neigh- larly stressful times, it is reasonable to assume borhoods as safer (Kriesberg, 1970). This may that it is a buffer against child maltreatment. reflect, of course, the former's greater intolerIt should be noted that the isolation of ance of child disobedience because of the increased presence of dangers and threats to the abusive families may be partly self-imposed child's safefy, higher levels of psychological owing to perceptions of the world as hostile distress, lack of child-care assistance, or a and threatening (Trickett & Susman, 1988).

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Furthermore, abusive parents may lack interpersonal skills necessary for positive relations—a failing that may discourage other adults from initiating and maintaining social interactions with them, further reinforcing their social isolation (Belsky, 1980; Trickett & Susman, 1988). Other studies of the relations between parenting support at the neighborhood/communify level and matemal behavior focus on professionals, rather than neighbors and relatives. Several investigations have found use of communify/neighborhood health services to have no enhancing effect on the maternal behavior and psychological well-being of black and white adolescent mothers (Colletta, 1981; Colletta & Lee, 1983; Crockenberg, 1987). In fact, in one study, adolescent mothers were more dissatisfied with professionals than any other group of helpers. Health professionals were often regarded as unsympathetic, impatient, disapproving, uninformative, and offering parenting advice that contradicted that of family members or other professionals (Crockenberg, 1987). It appears that negative attitudes among professionals who serve adolescent mothers, at least as perceived by their clients, undercut their role as potential facilitators of matemal functioning. As suggested earlier, the positive effects of parenting support on the mother's childrearing behavior may enhance the child's socioemotional development. Black and Chicano children who are poor and live in ethnically congruent communities (i.e., a census tract in which 25% or more of the tract is of the same ethnicify as the child) have more positive socioemotional functioning than those who live in ethnically incongruent communities (Sandier, 1980). The factors underlying this relation are not well understood, but it may be that ethnically congruent neighborhoods provide more assistance in the parenting role (e.g., exchanges of child supervision, child-care assistance in emergency situations, community activities geared to the unique needs and interests of minority parents) than ethnically incongruent neighborhoods, which may, in tum, foster development in the child. McAdoo (1982) reported that black parents who lived in predominantly black neighborhoods and interacted to a lesser extent with whites were less concemed about discrimination and were more at ease psychologically than black parents who lived in integrated but predominantly white neigh-

borhoods. Perhaps the former were less frequently exposed to attitudes and actions perceived to be discriminatory, had more network members who lived close by, and had fewer experiences that precipitated feelings of cultural alienation. In short, perhaps they were more socially integrated into their neighborhoods (a factor negatively eissociated with psychological distress among workingclass blacks [Holahan et al., 1983]). This could have positive consequences for the receipt of parenting support and, in tum, for the child's socioemotional development. This hypothesis is not necessarily inconsistent with Blau's (1981) study in which parental investment in the child correlated positively with blacks' exposure to whites, since there is no evidence from that study that black parents in integrated settings invested more in their children because they received more parenting support. Two other contexts in which parenting support appears to be relatively high, namely, in extended family households and in stable marriages, have been linked to socioemotional adjustment and cognitive development among black children. The benefits of collaborative child care between the mother and grandmother appear to be particularly great if the mother is single (Furstenberg, 1976). Kellam et al. (1977) found that socioemotional adjustment in poor black children living in mother/grandmother families was almost as high as that of children living in mother/father families, and significantly higher than that of children living alone with the mother. Longitudinal research with children bom to black adolescent mothers indicates that substance abuse, misbehavior in school, delinquent behavior, unhappiness, loneliness, and anxiefy are less common among children whose mothers have stable marriages than those whose mothers are unmarried or have unstable marriages (Furstenberg et al., 1987). Perhaps these relations reflect direct effects of grandmothers and fathers on the child, but they also may be indirect effects mediated by salutary effects of grandmothers and husbands on matemal behavior. The work of Dornbusch and his colleagues suggests this process. These researchers found that deviance is lowêr among both black and white adolescents living in one-parent extended households (one-parent family sharing residence with extended family members) than among those living in mother-only households, even afler controlling for income differences. The presence of extended family members promoted parental control and curbed

Vonnie C. McLoyd 335 adolescents' autonomy in decision making (Dombusch et al., 1985). 4. Exercise of child-rearing sanctions and controls.—In addition to indirectly preventing child maltreatment by enhancing parents' psychological well-being, members of parents' social networks may directly check child abuse by purposive intervention. Scholars have long suggested that one of the unique functions of the black extended family is the prevention of child maltreatment (Shimkin, Louie, & Frate, cited in Cazenave & Straus, 1979; Martin & Martin, 1978). Network embeddedness increases detection of child abuse, and a strong sense of obligation fosters direct intervention in the interest of the child. A family member may take the child from his abusing parents without the parents' permission but with the approval of other extended family members (Martin & Martin, 1978).

cally diffuse phenomenon among white children. Signiflcant drops in income owing to a wide range of circumstances (e.g., divorce, job loss, cutbacks in work hours) occur more frequently among black families; consequently, relatively more black children than white children fall into poverfy. In the last 2 decades, low wages, increasing levels of black male unemployment as a result of retrenchment in the manufacturing sector of the economy, and, relatedly, the rise and duration of stay in female-headed households have conspired to threaten the economic well-being of black children even more than in earlier times.

This article embedded the etiology of socioemotional problems among economically deprived black children in an ecological framework that gave attention to macroeconomic conditions, as well as parental behavior Parents of adolescent mothers have been and individual behavior. The analytic framefound to play an active role in retarding ma- work guiding this article, however, is necestemal punitiveness. King and Fullard (1982) sarily incomplete since it ignores the effects reported that black and white teenagers who on socioemotional functioning of biologilived with their parents, compared to those cal insults to the child in utero, nutritional who lived alone, were less punitive and re- deficiencies, school experience, and numerstrictive in their interactions with their in- ous other factors. A major goal was to demfants. Many of the teenagers in this study onstrate that poverfy and economic loss were aware that parents lessened their ten- have similar effects on parental behavior— dency to use harsh and aversive disciplinary behavior that stems to a large degree from practices, as evidenced by statements such psychological distress. The studies reviewed as "I would hit him more if it weren't for reflect impressive agreement about the effects my parents," and "My parents won't let me of economic hsirdship on parents' psychologispank him as ofên as I think he should be cal functioning and about the processes linking economic loss to children's socioemospanked." tional development. Compared to parents Network members may indirectly affect whose economic circumstances are more the child's development through interdiction fevorable, parents who are hard pressed and remediation of maltreatment of the child. financially are more depressed, irritable, and Elder (1979) found that child maltreatment explosive and more likely to experience by fathers experiencing severe economic loss marital conflict, effects that are more prowas less likely if the mother was protective of nounced and enduring among black men the child, rather than aloof and unshielding. compared to white men. Furthermore, ecoMothers were far less protective of their nomic hardship weakens individuals' abilify young sons than their young daughters, and to cope with new problems and difficulties, this difference seems to explain why eco- hence they are more likely to succumb to the nomic hardship during early childhood mark- debilitating effects of negative life events. edly increased psychological impairment in The disciplinary behaviors distinguishing young boys, even though it was linked to per- economically deprived parents from more sonal strength and resourcefulness in young affluent, economically stable parents (e.g., girls. higher use of physical punishment, less frequent use of reasoning and negotiation) also Summary and Discussion distinguish mothers who are experiencing A major insight from recent demographic high levels of emotional distress from those research is that there are different kinds of whose distress is low. This further supports poverfy that are systematically linked to race. the view that economic and social class differPoverfy among black children is marked by ences in child-rearing behaviors are peirtly exits persistence and geographic concentration, plained by differences in psychological diswhereas it is primarily a transitory, geographi- tress. Psychological distress in response to

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economic hardship is tempered by social and financial support, extemal causal attributions, and a number of other cognitive and affective fectors. Marital conflict stands out as a factor disposing the father to respond to economic loss with increased hostilify and arbitrariness toward the child and encouraging the child to question the father's authorify and form coalitions with the mother against the father. Punitive, harsh, nonsupportive parenting, exacerbated when the child is temperamentally diflBcult and less physically attractive, is a strong predictor of socioemotional problems among children, but this conclusion is much better substantiated for white children than for black children. Our analytic model emphasized not only risk factors but protective factors as well. Parents' socid networks provide emotional, informational, and parenting support, and the evidence is compelling that such support lessens erratic and harsh treatment of children among both black and white parents. Although data are not plentiful, there is some suggestion that social networks and support relationships indirectly enhance socioemotional functioning among poor black children. By acknowledging the problems created by economic hardship but, at the same time, highlighting factors contributing to positive family and child functioning, we sought to avoid stereotyping and distorting poor black families and their children. As a group living on the economic margin, black parents and their children are neither wholly deficient nor astoundingly competent or resilient. By necessify, this article drew from studies of nonblack children to inform us about how black children may be affected by economic loss. The article makes clear that, for blacks, some links in our analytic model are better substantiated than others. Ample evidence exists of increased psychological distress among black men who are unemployed and/or have lost jobs and black women who are poor, and there is fairly sound evidence conceming the social and cognitive factors that temper these effects. Also reasonably well documented are the consequences of psychological distress for the behavior of poor black mothers toward their children and the moderating influence of social support. The links among economic loss, family functioning, and black children's development, however, are virtually uncharted territory. This is paradoxical because, without exception, black workers suffer more than white

workers during economic recessions, both in terms of level and duration of deprivation and in terms of the proportion who are displaced (James, 1985). Unfortunately, the lack of research attention to the effects of economic loss on black family life is reflective of a more general paucify of research on the infiuence of various dimensions of work (e.g., characteristics of job, work schedule) on black workers and their families (Collins, 1986). We know that unemployment and marital dissolution are closely linked among blacks, but we are woefully uninformed about how economic loss alters parental and child functioning in black households. Research testing these links in the model is sorely needed. Black fathers as socializers of their children in any social or economic context is a theme largely absent from the child development literature (McAdoo, 1981). Researchers have increasingly tamed their attention to adolescent black fathers, most of whom lack sufficient income to raise their families out of poverfy, but what of older fathers with more established work histories and more stable marital and parental relations? How does economic loss affect their child-rearing behavior and attitudes? More important, how do two-parent black families function and adapt as a childrearing system under conditions of economic decline? Studies that combine interview data and observational data on family interactional pattems are likely to yield the greatest insights. Attention should be given to both more immediate and long-term consequences for the child (e.g., socioemotional functioning, educational and occupational aspirations and expectations, academic perfonnance, school behavior) as well as the processes that lead to these consequences. It is clear from the work of Elder, Patterson, and others that children's adjustment to stressful life circumstances is less a matter of their personal characteristics and individual resilience than of the family system in which they function. The quality of marital relations and parent-child relations prior to the loss, personal characteristics of the child, and network embeddedness and support are all factors likely to influence the adaptation process. These questions should be pursued from a developmental perspective to clarify how children's social and cognitive competences influence their responses to economic loss and how economic loss affects the child's abilify to master the unique tasks of different developmental periods. Additionally, the categories of economic hardship reseachers study as contexts impinging on fam-

Vonnie C. McLoyd ily life and child development should be expanded to include unstable work (Rubin, 1976) and low-wage employment. Mental health agencies as well as those designing intervention programs to help displaced and impoverished parents and their children would benefit from this information. With even the most competent research team and the most accessible and cooperative study participants, this kind of research is difficult and time consuming. To the list of impediments we must add the increased presence of stressors in the lives of blacks (especially lower and working class) that makes participation in research particularly burdensome and the justifiably jaundiced view many blacks, as potential study participants, hold about psychological research because of its historical bias toward interpretations that blame the victim. Researchers must be willing to commit substantial human and financial resources to bridge these gaps and gain the cooperation and trust of black femilies. As the contents of this article testify, research on the impact of economic decline on children focuses exclusively on the children of displaced men, despite significant numbers of married and single mothers who are displaced, unemployed, and seeking work. Investigations of black mothers experiencing economic loss should be undertaken not just because they are not represented in the current data base, but also because of the psychological and financial significance of their employment. Economic need historically has forced black women to work in disproportionate numbers compared to white women, and hence labor force participation has become an enculturated aspect of black women's sex-role identify, self-esteem, and psychological fulfillment (Washington, 1988b). Furthermore, the wages of black wives are more critical to their families' standard of living than the wages of white wives, owing to the depressed wages of black husbands. As evidence of this, drops in the work hours of wives in twoparent households are more likely to push black children into poverfy than white children (Duncan & Rodgers, 1988). Economic loss by female household heads undoubtedly is even more stress inducing than it is for wives, as there is no secondary wage earner to cushion the financial impact Furthermore, as we have shown in this article, single mothers are at very high risk for mental health problems even under favorable economic circumstances. For a variefy of reasons, then, loss of employment or earnings is likely to have significant effects on the psychological and

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parental functioning of black mothers and, in tum, their children. Displacement of workers is expected to continue as the manufacturing sector of the economy declines. In addition, fewer companies in the rapidly growing serviceproducing sector are expected to provide lifetime employment because they will be smaller and have a higher turnover rate. These projections suggest that workers will face more frequent changes of salary, employers, and occupations. Research is needed to understand the factors that render these transitions least stressful to workers and their families. Further specification by researchers of environmental conditions that enhance and impair parenting and socioemotional development in the context of poverfy is crucial, given that structural changes and current economic policies reflecting a serious lack of will to eradicate poverfy ensure that large segments of the black population will be economically disadvantaged for some time to come. Our understanding of the particular features of neighborhoods/communities that infiuence parenting and black children's development has lagged, despite the obvious importance of these issues and longstanding appeals for such work (Bames, 1972; Myers & King, 1983). Fortunately, Wilson's (1987) recent writings about the growing isolation of poor blacks have piqued researchers' interest in these issues (e.g., Jencks & Mayer, in press). However, it is not enough simply to compare the development of, for example, poor black children from similar families who grow up in different kinds of neighborhoods, although even studies that take a "social address" approach would be preferable to the present paucify of high-qualify data. Especially needed is scrupulous identification of the particular features in communities that produce a given effect and the processes through which these effects occur (Bronfenbrenner, 1986). For the purpose of formulating social policy, for example, it is important to know whether particular effects impinge on the child directly or indirectly through, for example, the child's parents or teachers. Poor communities, like more affluent communities, differ on several dimensions that may influence parenting and, in tum, black children's development, under conditions of poverfy and economic loss. Among these factors are degree of political activism, presence of mental health and human service organizations, incidence of crime, salience of

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churches and religious organizations (which this approach. Researchers also need to adopt may differ in the kinds of child-rearing prac- more precise definitions of poverfy; specificatices they sanction), presence and qualify of tion of family income-to-need ratios would day-care centers, and degree of parenting sup- help clarify the meaning and appropriate port provided by neighbors. Another commu- generalizôn of many findings. nify characteristic that may indirectly, as well We need to better understand the socialias directly, influence socioemotional develc^- zation of children's conceptions of economic ment is the availabilify of employment for inequalify and causal attributions about ecoteenagers or proximify to other areas where nomic hardship. Leahy's (in press) research such opportunities exist. Under certain condi- with black and white children showed that tions, employment among adolescents may those in lower socioeconomic strata were less produce feelings of self-reliance, competence, likely than upper-middle-class children to exdependabilify, and optimism about life plain poverfy by reference to equity (e.g., chances. It also may foster positive mentor re- lesser work, effort, education, intelligence lationships, enhance the esteem economically among the poor). Black children were less deprived parents feel toward their children, likely than their white counterparts to attriband reduce adolescents' exposure to parental ute poverfy and wealth to fete and, among punitiveness brought on by economic diffi- those from middle-class backgrounds, less culties. Adolescent employment may be a likely than white children to deny the possisource of age and sex differences in children's bilify of changing poverfy. Nonetheless, with vulnerabilify to harsh parenting, since youn- increasing age, both black and white children ger children and females are less likely to be (and children of all social classes) increasingly employed outside the home than older chil- legitimized economic inequalify by reference dren and males. The value of employment to individual differences in effort, abilify, inamong today's adolescents has been seriously telligence, and personalify. What socialization questioned (Greenberger & Steinberg, 1986), and/or cognitive factors underlie this developbut the evidence conceming its effects on mental path and departures from it? What black adolescents is too sketchy and conflict- specific factors explain race differences in ing to draw any firm conclusions (Crowley, children's explanations of economic in1984; D'Amico & Baker, 1984; Gottfredson, equalify? 1985; Williams & Komblum, 1985). These questions raise the broader and The dramatic race differences in the geo- largely unexplored issue of the strategies graphical context and duration of poverfy used by children of varying ages to cope with have far-reaching implications for the design transitory and persistent poverfy. It has been and interpretation of future studies comparing suggested that repeated failure at active copblacks and whites, the most frequent fype of ing, that is, failure to remove the stressors study inclusive of blacks in the field of child fk>m one's life, can result in feelings of powdevelopment (McLoyd & Randolph, 1984). erlessness and in the use of more palliative Failure to take into account the fact that poor forms of coping that seek only to dull the realblacks are far more likely than poor whites to ify of the stressors (Barbarin, 1983; Belle, live in poor, isolated neighborhoods lacking 1984). We assume that this process can opermyriad resources favorable to parenting and ate among children and adolescents as well. children's development may lead researchers Cognitive and behavioral pattems known as to conclude erroneously that differences be- "playing it cool" and "getting over" may reptween blacks and whites (e.g., attitudes, psy- resent ways black youth cope with unremitchological distress) are due to stable psycho- ting economic hardship (Gibbs, 1989). What logical characteristics or family factors when, cognitive schema increase the ability of black in fact, they are rooted in contextual or neigh- children to maintain positive emotional funcborhood differences. Race-comparative stud- tioning in the face of severe economic depriies that ignore race differences in the chronic- vation, and what are the antecedents of these ify of poverfy may be invalid for similar schema? Is the link between mental health reasons. At one time, disaggregating race and and causal attribution for one's economic class and asing standardized rather than difficulfy as strong in children as research has wholly subjective measures of socioeconomic shown it to be in adults? Within the lower status were taken as measures of progress in class, in particular, peers have often been race comparative research (McLoyd & Ran- viewed more as hindrances than facilitators of dolph, 1985). Recent advances in our under- positive development, yet peers often assist standing of poverfy among blacks and whites children through difficult transitions toward have underscored the serious limitations of positive outcomes. This largely perjorative

Vonnie C. McLoyd 339 perspective needs to be counterbalanced by study of peers as potential sources of support for black children experiencing economic hardship. Research on the nature of the peer networks of resilient but economically deprived children could provide important prescriptive information. A related issue in need of investigation is the relation between peer group and family processes under conditions of poverfy and economic loss.

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Effect of subjective economic status on psychological distress among farmers and non-farmers of rural China.

Prevalence and impact of financial hardship among New England pediatric stem cell transplantation families.

The economic impact of childhood acute gastroenteritis on Malawian families and the healthcare system.

Unemployment and household food hardship in the economic recession.

Parenting concerns, quality of life, and psychological distress in patients with advanced cancer.

SOCIAL SUPPORT, PSYCHOLOGICAL DISTRESS, AND PARENTING STRAINS IN MOTHERS OF VERY LOW BIRTHWEIGHT INFANTS.

The Impact of School Social Support and Bullying Victimization on Psychological Distress among California Adolescents.

Living with economic hardship at the end of life.

Impact of expectations on the effects of exercise on psychological distress.

Economic hardship and suicide mortality in Finland, 1875-2010.