Cumulative Socioeconomic Status Risk and Observations of Parent Depression: Are There Associations With Child Outcomes?

Parental depression (Goodman et al., 2011) and low socioeconomic status (SES) are important risk factors for child maladjustment. Further, depression and low SES are linked; low SES adults are more likely to experience depression. Whereas studies commonly covary out noise associated with SES variability, research on the association of SES with child outcomes after controlling for parental depression is limited. This study aimed to extend the literature by observing parent depressive affect and evaluating the relationship between cumulative SES risk and child problems as well as whether child gender moderates this association using multigroup nested model comparisons. Findings suggested that cumulative SES risk status explained significant variance in child- and parent-reported internalizing problems and parent-reported externalizing problems after accounting for observed parent depressive affect. Of importance, child gender moderated 2 of these significant findings (i.e., child-reported internalizing and parent-reported externalizing behaviors), such that girls, but not boys, were at higher risk of problems in the context of high cumulative SES risk.