Economic Disadvantage, Caregiver Mental Health, Family Functioning, and Children’s Social, Emotional, and Behavioral Well-Being in Low-Income Families

Abstract

Economic disadvantage continues to be of significant concern to many Canadian families and is at the forefront of many municipal, provincial, and federal government initiatives. The health consequences of living in low-income have been well-documented; however, the relationships between economic disadvantage, caregiver mental health, family functioning, and children’s social, emotional, and behavioral outcomes are less clear, particularly in vulnerable families, such as Foreign-Born Immigrants, Foreign-Born Refugees, Canadian-Born Indigenous, and those families with a lone caregiver. Previous theories of the relationships between income, parental mental health, and children’s outcomes have demonstrated that economic difficulties have a negative effect on parents’ emotions, behaviors, and relationships, which then have a negative influence on the caregivers’ ability to parent appropriately and family dynamics, which can, in turn, affect children’s outcomes. This study used data collected through the Family First Edmonton Project (FFE) to investigate: 1) the impact of economic disadvantage on caregiver mental health and family functioning and children’s social, emotional, and behavioral outcomes (internalizing, externalizing, behavioral symptoms, and adaptive skills); 2) the mediational effect of caregiver mental health and family functioning in the relationships between economic disadvantage and children’s outcomes; and 3) whether the relationships vary across groups that were included in the sample. The results reflected that economic disadvantage did not have the expected predictive impact on caregiver mental health, family functioning nor on children’s outcomes. The strongest predictor of children’s social, emotional, and behavioral outcomes was caregiver’s mental health, which was found consistently across groups and children’s outcomes. An exception was that caregiver’s mental health was not predictive of children’s adaptive skills in Canadian-Born Indigenous families. In the overall sample, there were small effects found between family functioning with children’s externalizing and internalizing problems but stronger relationships were found with behavioral symptoms and adaptive skills. Within represented groups, family functioning was a stronger predictor of children’s outcomes in Canadian-Born Indigenous and Canadian-Born Non-Indigenous Families, than for the Foreign-Born Immigrant and Refugee Families. For the Foreign-Born Immigrant families, family functioning had only predictive effects on children’s adaptive skills, whereas for Foreign-Born Refugees, family functioning was only predictive of children’s internalizing problems. This demonstrates that, for the two Canadian-Born groups, family functioning may have a wider range of influence on children’s outcomes than for Foreign-Born groups. These results demonstrate that regardless of economic situations, it is often factors within families that may exert the greatest effect on some children’s outcomes. Implications for research, intervention and policy are discussed.