Perceived Social and Financial Support's Effect on Single Mother's Mental Health

Single mothers shoulder a disproportionate amount of responsibility for home and family life, in addition to, participation in the labor force to finanically support their families.  The number of children being raised in single parent homes has rapidly increased over the past three decades and predominantly the custodial parent is female. 

A structural equation modeling (SEM) approach was performed on longitudinal data available from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing dataset, a national dataset representing low-income, minority families (the majority unmarried units) in large cities across the nation.  The dataset collected in five waves allows for a longitudinal SEM analysis on perceived (i.e. loan from someone/emergency childcare) and actual financial supports (government assistance, housing subsidy) influence on single mothers mental health symptoms and other characteristics (ie. life satisfication, self-efficacy) over the first 11 years of the focal child's life.

Initial analysis found statistically signficant pathways between perceived and actual social and financial supports on mother's well-being mentally and phsycially.  Pathways from perceived supports were more likely to be statisically signficant influences on mother's mental and physical health and wellbeing, as well as, life satisricaion and perceived self-efficiacy.   

Much research has been performed on actual finanical supports for families and single parents in some cases.  This research adds to the literature by comparing signficnance of not only actual in-kind benefits and financial assistnace but also the perception of support and how that can influence outcomes for single mothers in low-income and challenging situations.  Children growing up in homes with reduced toxic stress and within the care of mother's with higher self-efficacy and life satisfaction can increase mental and physical health outcomes for both mother and child.  This in turn creates less burden to society for health costs and needed family and parenting interventions.