From prenatal economic pressure to child problem behavior at age 6: An examination of the longitudinal family stress model and the role of social support in two-parent families.

Abstract

The family stress model outlines that parents' economic pressure can lead to a cascade of family stress processes, which in turn can lead to child internalizing and externalizing behavior. In the current preregistered study, we investigated to what extent the relation between prenatal economic pressure and child internalizing and externalizing behavior at child age 6 can be explained through the sequential mediating processes of parents' psychological distress and harsh parenting at child age 3. In our models, we accounted for the influence of both mothers and fathers. We also tested the moderating role of social support at child age 6 months on two specific paths within the family stress model. We conducted (moderated) multiple mediator models on multi-informant, longitudinal data from 2,705 families enrolled in the Generation R Study, a large prospective birth cohort in the Netherlands. After accounting for mothers' economic pressure and family stress processes, only fathers' economic pressure was indirectly and positively associated with child externalizing, but not internalizing behavior, through higher levels of paternal psychological distress and paternal harsh parenting. We did not find support for the moderating role of social support in the pathways we examined within the family stress model. Our findings highlight the potential cascading influence of fathers' prenatal economic pressure, through increased family stress processes, on child externalizing behavior in early childhood. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).