Parental stress in poor families

Abstract

This study's purpose was to investigate possible relationships between poverty, its dimensions and parental stress. This research was quantitative, with a cross-sectional design and probabilistic sample of 433 participants registered in the Federal Government's Cadastroúnico. The instruments used were the Sociodemographic Inventory, the Family Poverty Index (IPF) and the Parental Stress Index (PSI). To assess the relationship between the variables, the participants were divided into two groups based on the instruments measuring poverty (more and less poor) and stress (normal and high stress). Strongly significant associations were found between the poorer categories and high stress, in terms of both multidimensional poverty and some of its dimensions (access to knowledge, income and child development). The results related major difficulties in parenting practices to vulnerability aspects traditionally identified in studies about poor families, such as income and knowledge, and also highlight the hardships inflicted by poverty on children and adolescents.