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

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.