Race, Socioeconomic Status, and Mothers’ Parental Stress

Abstract

Studies on parenting and mental health have documented both racial differences in mothers’ parental stress levels and mixed evidence on the impacts of mothers’ socioeconomic status (SES) on their parental stress. Less is known about how the association between mothers’ SES and parental stress varies by race, or to what extent this variation contributes to racial differences in mothers’ levels of parental stress. This study addresses these questions using data from the second wave of Early Childhood Longitudinal Study: 2010–2011 Kindergarten Class (N = 8,548). The ordinary least squares (OLS) regression and Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition results show that compared with white and Asian mothers, low income and education have more detrimental impacts on black and Hispanic mothers’ feelings of parental stress. This racially diverse association between mothers’ SES and parental stress is an important reason why Asian mothers face higher parental stress than black and Hispanic mothers.