The Effects of Discrimination on Black Mothers’ Internalizing Symptoms and Parenting Behavior

Williams, Amber

The Effects of Discrimination on Black Mothers’ Internalizing Symptoms and Parenting Behavior

dc.contributor.advisor	Dougherty, Lea
dc.contributor.advisor	Dunbar, Angel
dc.contributor.author	Williams, Amber
dc.date.accessioned	2020-05-11T09:48:52Z
dc.date.available	2020-05-11T09:48:52Z
dc.date.issued	2020-01-20
dc.description.abstract	Can discrimination impact mothers’ mental health and parenting? Based on prior literature, I formed four hypotheses: Black mothers’ experiences with discrimination will be positively correlated to depressive and anxiety symptoms; depressive symptoms would be positively correlated with punitive and minimizing parental responses; anxiety symptoms would be positively correlated to punitive and minimizing parental responses; and, discrimination will be positively correlated to parental punitive and minimizing responses to children’s emotions. I conducted a secondary data analysis using data from the School Transitions and Academic Readiness Project (STAR) at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro (N=277). Participants (n=86) included Black mothers and their 4-6 year old children, and measures assessed discrimination, depression, anxiety, and parent emotional socialization in relation to punitive and minimizing parenting practices. Results revealed a trend association between mother-reported racial discrimination and their depressive symptoms, r = .18, p < .10, and a significant positive correlation between mother-reported discrimination and anxiety symptoms, r = .22, p < .05. There was a significant positive correlation between mothers’ depressive symptoms and parental punitive responses, r = .43, p < .05, as well as between mothers’ depressive symptoms and parental minimizing responses, r = .34, p < .05. There was a significant positive correlation between mothers’ anxiety symptoms and parental punitive responses, r = .31, p < .05, and a significant positive correlation between mothers’ anxiety symptoms and parental minimizing responses, r = .24, p < .05. There was no significant correlation between mothers’ discrimination experiences and parenting for either parental punitive or minimizing responses. Results suggest that mothers’ discrimination experiences were related to their internalizing symptoms but not the mothers’ parenting behaviors. Future longitudinal work is necessary to examine whether discrimination may impact parenting over time via parents’ depressive or anxiety symptoms.	en_US
dc.identifier	https://doi.org/10.13016/n7rf-2x46
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/1903/25968
dc.language.iso	en_US	en_US
dc.relation.isAvailableAt	Department of Psychology
dc.relation.isAvailableAt	College of Behavioral and Social Sciences
dc.relation.isAvailableAt	Digital Repository at the University of Maryland
dc.relation.isAvailableAt	University of Maryland (College Park, Md)
dc.subject	discrimination	en_US
dc.subject	anxiety	en_US
dc.subject	punitive parenting responses	en_US
dc.subject	minimizing parenting responses	en_US
dc.subject	depression	en_US
dc.title	The Effects of Discrimination on Black Mothers’ Internalizing Symptoms and Parenting Behavior	en_US
dc.type	Thesis	en_US