THE IMPLICATIONS OF STRESS FOR WELLBEING IN DIVERSE FAMILIES

• Sponsoring Institution: National Institute of Food and Agriculture
• Project Status: COMPLETE
• Funding Source: HATCH
• Reporting Frequency: Annual
• Accession No.: 1020214
• Project Start Date: Oct 1, 2019
• Project End Date: Sep 30, 2024
• Program Code: [(N/A)]- (N/A)

Recipient Organization
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, DAVIS
410 MRAK HALL
DAVIS,CA 95616-8671

Performing Department
Human Ecology

Non Technical Summary
This project supports the mission of the Agricultural Experiment Station by addressing the Hatch Act area(s) of: home economics and family life; human nutrition; rural and community development.Stressful family circumstances can serve as catalysts for the dysregulation of emotional and physiological processes across the entire family. Parents living under high amounts of stress are at risk for greater mental and physical health problems, faster physical disease progression, poorer interpersonal skills, greater emotional distress, and a greater likelihood of divorce. These stressors tax parent's emotional availability leading to more harsh and punitive parenting practices, as well as more lax and uninvolved parenting practices. Children reared in high stress families have lower educational attainment, more mental and physical health problems, and have more difficulty regulating emotional and physiological responses to stress. Damages to the parent-child relationship and negative parenting behaviors are thought to be a driving force behind the association between these family stressors and child outcomes. Specifically, parents play a critical role in facilitating the development of biobehavioral regulation in their children, such as children's abilities to manage anger and frustration, along with stress physiology. Using psychological, sociological, and physiological measures, this project aims to examine the causes and consequences of family stress on the whole family systems, focusing on family relationships and child development. The Mexican origin community represents a large and understudied population. This project specifically focuses on Mexican origin children and families. It is of critical importance to the people of California that the contexts and environments in which families thrive, and all individuals are able to meet their health and financial potential are uncovered. Thus, this research project aims help Californians reach that potential by informing programs on parenting, romantic relationships, and stress management.

Animal Health Component

(N/A)

Research Effort Categories

Basic

100%

Applied

(N/A)

Developmental

(N/A)

Classification

Knowledge Area (KA)	Subject of Investigation (SOI)	Field of Science (FOS)	Percent
802	6010	3070	25%
802	6020	3070	25%
806	6010	3070	25%
806	6020	3070	25%

Knowledge Area
806 - Youth Development; 802 - Human Development and Family Well-Being;

Subject Of Investigation
6010 - Individuals; 6020 - The family and its members;

Field Of Science
3070 - Psychology;

Keywords

family stress

family relations

poverty

marital conflict

child development

physiological regulation

emotional regulation

Goals / Objectives
1) Examine the impact of contextual stressors on parents' wellbeing.2) Examine the impact of parents' on child wellbeing.3) Examine Mexican origin families' cultural resilience factors predicting better than expected outcomes given the family's adverse experiences

Project Methods
Procedure(s): The California Babies Project is a longitudinal study of Mexican origin families. Families are followed starting when the child is 6 months old until 36 months old. Many participating families are Spanish/English bilingual and/or predominantly speak Spanish at home, but at least one parent attended English-language high school and is proficient in English. The sample has considerable socioeconomic variability (e.g., parental education, income-to-needs ratios), but a large proportion of families are experiencing economic hardship.The protocol consists of a home visit where the families fill out questionnaires, and participate in interaction tasks and semi-structured interviews. Interaction tasks assess inter- parent-child interactions. Families are then instructed on how to collect their own data for the next two weeks. During this time parents fill out 4 short questionnaires a day for 6 days; collect 4 saliva samples a day for 3 days; and collect objective sleep data for 8 nights. The daily assessments assess intra-individual differences in physiological responses to stress.Duration: This project will take approximately 5 years to complete (2020-2025). Years 1-5 will be used for analyzing data, summarizing the results, and disseminating the findings through publications and presentations. Years 1-2 will also involve data collection, data entry and scoring, and preliminary data analyses. Years 1-2 will also include writing a grant for external funds on the renewal of the grant, to expand knowledge in the area of stress and the family wellbeing. Years 3-5 will focus on analyzing data and publishing findings. If additional funding is secured, Years 3-5 will also include data collection to continue to follow these families as their children grow.

Progress 10/01/19 to 09/30/20

Outputs
Target Audience:Our main target audiences are: parents, educators, mental health service providers, scientists, and policy makers. During this reporting period I reached social workers who provide mental health services; and scientists working in the area of child and family science, as well as the broader scientific community interested in the psychological impacts of the pandemic. Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?I have focused on training across the past 5 months. My team has trained 3 new bilingual home visitors with roughly 80 hours of training each, and a new lab managers. I also have two graduate students in my lab, each who work roughly 20 hours a week on this project. Under my supervision they has extensively studied stress physiology, non-invasive collections, and sleep physiology. This project has provided multiple training opportunities for my graduate students. Each of the publications include graduate student co-authors. This project has also provided opportunities to present posters, and speak at conferences. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?We have disseminated results to three communities of interest. 1) We disseminated knowledge to the child and family focused scientific community by publishing two peer reviewed papers and one book chapter. 2) I created workshops and gave talks to child welfare workers. 3) I also disseminated knowledge to the broader community by giving two townhall presentations and a press release on one of the journal articles. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?We will continue to recruit and enroll families, aiming for approximately 5 families to participate per month. The pandemic has severely impacted our ability to recruit. However, as we collect more data we will turn our focus on disseminating data from this project.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? This project's expected outcomes include 1) scientific presentations and publications; 2) training of undergraduate and graduate students as well as postdoctoral scholars; 3) outreach activities such as informational sessions and workshops to educate parents, foster parents, and clinicians in the community; and 4) information for California mental health services and programs for families and youth, with a focus on at-risk families and Mexican origin families. With respect to goal 1 we published 2 peer-reviewed papers along with a book chapter. Both papers highlight the impacts of stress on families. Specifically we found that family stress (in the form of problematic parenting) is associated with children's cortisol levels; and family stress (in the form of economic strain) increases mothers experience of mental health problems. For goal 2 I have spent a significant amount of time training my graduate students (see more below). With respect to goal 3 I participated in two townhall presentations describing our findings of stress during the pandemic and its impact on mothers. I also redesigned a training program from an in person training to a remote training.

Publications

• Type: Journal Articles Status: Accepted Year Published: 2020 Citation: Buhler-Wassmann, A., Hibel, L. C., Fondren, K., & Valentino, K. (accepted) Child diurnal cortisol differs based on profiles of maternal emotion socialization in high risk, low income, and racially diverse families. Developmental Psychobiology.
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Awaiting Publication Year Published: 2021 Citation: Hibel, L. C, Boyer, C, J., Buhler-Wassmann, A., & Shaw, B. (accepted) The psychological and economic toll of the COVID-19 pandemic on Latina mothers in primarily low-income essential worker families. Traumatology.
• Type: Book Chapters Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Hibel, L. C., Marceau, K., & Buhler-Wassmann, A. (2020) Salivary bioscience and human development. D. A., Granger (Eds.) Foundations of Interdisciplinary Salivary Bioscience. Springer.