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COPING STRATEGIES OF LOW-INCOME MOTHERS: STABILITY AND CHANGE OVER THREE YEARS
Lorraine M. McKelvey, Laurie A. Van Egeren, Rachel F.
Schiffman, Hiram Fitzgerald, Thomas Reischl and Mary Cunningham-Deluca
Michigan State University
This study examines strategies for coping utilized by low-income, high-risk families. Stress has consistently been shown to impact the quality of relationships within the family (Webster-Stratton, 1990), which has been linked to child developmental outcomes. Low-income families enrolled in Early Head Start (EHS) and other prevention programs are generally considered at high risk for living in stressful environments and, in turn, for poorer parenting. Family coping strategies can potentially strengthen or maintain family resources that serve to protect the family from stressful situations. In this study, maternal reports of service use, economic need, and social resources were used to predict individual differences in the level of and change in coping behaviors over time, and EHS program participation was examined as a moderator of relations between baseline characteristics and change in such strategies.
Method
Sample. The sample for this study consists of 152 mothers and their infants participating in an ongoing longitudinal study of children eligible for Early Head Start in Jackson, Michigan. Seventy-eight of the families were not part of the EHS intervention, and 74 families were EHS participants. Mothers averaged 22.3 years of age (SD = 4.9) and mean income was $9,090 (SD = $6,419). The majority (76 percent) of the sample was Caucasian, 18 percent reported being African-American, and the remaining 7 percent of the sample reported being of other ethnicities. Forty-five percent of the sample reported not having completed a high school diploma at enrollment, 34 percent reported having completed high school or a GED, and the remaining 21 percent reported having attended some college (with three people having completed at least a two-year program).
Procedure: Maternal reports of coping strategies were collected at four points in time: at the time of enrollment (child age M = 4.8 months, SD = 3.61) and when the child was 14, 24, and 36 months old. All predictors used in the analysis were assessed at enrollment. Measures: Coping. The Family Crisis Oriented Personal Scales (F-COPES) is designed to measure problem-solving behaviors and attitudes of families (McCubbin, Olson & Larsen, 1987). One subscale measures cognitive reframing (8 items, alpha = .68), and three subscales measure support seeking from: (a) family and friends (6 items, alpha = .76), (b) neighbors (3 items, alpha = .73), and (c) service providers (3 items, alpha = .64) (McKelvey, Schiffman, Fitzgerald & von Eye, in press). There were no significant differences between the program and comparison group on coping at enrollment.
Measures: Predictors of individual differences in coping (Schiffman et al., 2000):
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Emotional support: The degree to which mothers report having someone to talk to them, provide support, take care of them when they are sick, provide encouragement, and have fun with them (3-pt. scale).
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Social conflict: Count of the number of problematic social relationships reported, potential range of zero to five.
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Public assistance: Count of public assistance programs, including WIC, TANF/AFDC, SSI, food stamps, Medicaid, rent subsidy and assistance with bill payment
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Formal support services: Count of support services used by the family, including EHS, FIA, Health Center programs, MSS/ISS.
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EHS program participation (yes/no).
There were significant differences between program participants and non-participants at enrollment on two of the measures: social conflict and formal support services. Families participating in EHS reported higher social conflict (M = 1.31) than non-EHS families (M = .94, p < .05). Furthermore, families in EHS reported higher formal support (M = 1.97) than non-EHS families (M = 1.19, p < .01). This would be expected given that EHS participants would be the recipients of one additional service (EHS). There were no other differences between the groups at baseline.
Results and Discussion
Hierarchical linear modeling (HLM; Bryk & Raudenbush, 1992) was used to examine relations between coping strategies and predictors measured at enrollment. Individual growth curves were represented by: (a) an intercept (level of support seeking at 36 months), and (b) a slope (linear rate of change). These estimates were used to derive an average growth curve. The average intercept and slope subsequently became the dependent variables, and predictor variables were entered to account for individual differences in each parameter. Each predictor was tested separately. To assist in interpretation, effect size r estimates are also included: .10, .30, and .50 indicate small, medium, and large effects, respectively (Cohen, 1988). Significant results are presented in Table 1.
Cognitive reframing. By the 36-month assessment, mothers reported increases in cognitive reframing over time regardless of EHS participation. Differences in the level of cognitive reframing were predicted by social conflict, with mothers who reported having more conflicted interactions also reporting less reframing. Differences in change in cognitive reframing were predicted by an interaction between social conflict and participation in EHS. Mothers who participated in EHS used the reframing strategy more consistently than non-EHS mothers, regardless of their degree of social conflict. In addition, change was predicted by an interaction between receiving public assistance and participation in EHS, such that mothers who participated in EHS showed consistent increases over time in use of cognitive reframing strategies regardless of their use of public assistance, whereas non-EHS mothers who used public assistance showed decreases in cognitive reframing over time.
| Parameter | Effect size |
|---|---|
| Cognitive Reframing | |
| Level | -- |
| Baseline social conflict | -.20** |
| Linear change | .28** |
| EHS program participation | 0.09 |
| Baseline social conflict | -.16 (t) |
| Baseline public assistance | -0.1 |
| Baseline social conflict x EHS program participation | .20** |
| Baseline public assistance x EHS program participation | .17* |
| Seeking Support from Family and Friends | |
| Level | -- |
| Linear change | 0.08 |
| EHS program participation | -0.04 |
| Baseline emotional support | .16* |
| Baseline social conflict | -.16* |
| Baseline emotional support x EHS program participation | .17* |
| Baseline social conflict x EHS program participation | .17* |
| Seeking Support from Neighbors | |
| Level | -- |
| Linear change | 0 |
| EHS program participation | -.18* |
| Baseline formal support | .14(t) |
| Baseline formal support x EHS program participation | -.17* |
| Seeking Support from Service Providers | |
| Level | -- |
| EHS Participation | .20* |
| Baseline coupled | -.21* |
| Baseline coupled x EHS program participation | .21* |
| Linear change | 0 |
| Notes: EHS = Early Head Start.
aEffect sizes cannot be negative. Directional sign is included to facilitate interpretation, where negative effect sizes in LEVEL represent lower levels at enrollment than at 36 months, and in LINEAR CHANGE represent decreases over time. tp<.10. *p<.05. **p < .01. |
Seeking support from family and friends. No overall change over time was evident in support seeking from family and friends. However, individual differences in change in seeking support were predicted by interactions between EHS participation and emotional support and EHS participation and social conflict. Both interactions suggest that seeking support from family and friends is moderated by participation in EHS. Results indicate that change in this coping strategy is relatively stable for mothers in the EHS program, whereas non-EHS participants demonstrate varied patterns of change over time based on reports of emotional support and social conflict at enrollment. Non-EHS mothers who reported having greater levels of emotional support increased in support seeking from family and friends over time, whereas non-EHS mothers who reported having less emotional support at enrollment decreased in their use of support from friends and family over time. Furthermore, non-EHS mothers who reported higher levels of social conflict at enrollment, demonstrated decreases in seeking support from family and friends. Alternatively, non-EHS mothers with few social conflicts reported an increase in seeking support from family and friends over time.
Seeking support from neighbors. No overall change over time was evident in support seeking from neighbors, but changes over time were moderated by EHS program participation. There was an interaction between formal supports and participation in EHS. Mothers who participated in EHS demonstrated no change in their seeking of support from neighbors over time, whereas non-EHS mothers who reported more formal supports were more likely to increase in support-seeking from neighbors.
Seeking support from service providers. There was no overall change over time in seeking support from service providers, but differences in level were predicted by EHS program participation, with those involved in EHS reporting seeking more support from service providers than non-EHS mothers. There was also an interaction between being partnered and participation in EHS. Although both EHS and non-EHS mothers who had a partner sought less support from service providers, non-EHS mothers who did not have a partner were especially unlikely to utilize this strategy for coping.
These results indicate that mothers in EHS, even those at potentially higher risk due to increased needs for services or lack of perceived support from others, are able to use positive coping strategies more consistently than non-EHS mothers. Among non-EHS mothers, those who perceive their support networks more positively tend to cope in similar ways as EHS mothers and those experiencing the highest levels of risk tend to cope increasingly poorly over time.
References
Bryk, A. S., & Raudenbush, S. W. (1992). Hierarchical linear models: Applications and data analysis methods. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
Cohen, J. (1988). Statistical power analysis for the behavioral sciences (2(nd) ed.). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
McCubbin, H., Olson, D. H., & Larsen, A. (1987). F-COPES: Family Crisis Oriented Personal Evaluation Scales. In H. McCubbin & A. Thompson (Eds.), Family Assessment Inventories for Research and Practice (pp. 195-205). Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin - Madison.
McKelvey, L., Schiffman, R., Fitzgerald, H., & von Eye, A. (in press). Family stress and parent-infant interaction: The mediating role of coping. Infant Mental Health Journal.
Schiffman, R. F., Omar, M. A., Keefe, D., Reischl, T. M., Gibbons, C. L., Fitzgerald, H. E., Brophy-Herb, H., Kostelnik, M., Cunningham-DeLuca, M., & McKelvey, L. (2000, July). Family health model as a guide for evaluation of an Early Head Start program. Poster session presented at the XIIth Biennial International Conference on Infant Studies, Brighton, UK.
Webster-Stratton, C. (1990). Stress: A potential disruptor of parent perceptions and family interactions. Journal of Clinical Child Psychology, 19 (4), 302-312.
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