A Resilience Process Model of Parenting in the Context of Poverty

Poverty is associated with multiple contextual stressors, which may exacerbate child-rearing stress and interfere with positive parenting. However, many parents successfully navigate seemingly insurmountable obstacles and engage in positive parenting, which may allow parents to minimize the impact of poverty on child development by exerting control in responding to child-rearing challenges and focusing on parenting as a source of agency and competence. This paper provides a resilience process model of parenting based on the literatures from multiple disciplines, including socio-cognitive processes, decision-making, and coping, to identify risk and protective factors that contribute to positive parenting. Parents’ adaptive mindsets and more active, problem-oriented coping strategies may strengthen parents’ cognitive and emotion regulation, which, in turn, may lead to more positive parenting behaviors. This conceptual model may contribute to a more nuanced appreciation of how parents living in poverty successfully manage child-rearing challenges. By understanding the resilience process of parenting, we may inform family practice and interventions to better support well-being among families living in poverty.