Teenagers often know when their parents are having money problems − and that knowledge is linked to mental health challenges, new research finds

By Jamie Hanson, University of Pittsburg

When parents try to shield their kids from financial hardship, they may be doing them a favor: Teens’ views about their families’ economic challenges are connected to their mental health and behavior.

To fill this gap, my colleagues and I asked more than 100 Pittsburgh-area teenagers, as well as their parents, about their family income, their views about their financial challenges, and their mental health. We checked in with them multiple times over nine months.

Doing this, we found a few important things. First, we found that many families’ economic situations varied over time – they were doing fine with money in some months and struggling during others. And second, we found that when teenagers said they and their family were experiencing hardship, those teens had more behavioral problems.

For example, many teens said that they couldn’t afford school supplies or that their caregivers worried because they lacked money for necessities. In the months when teens reported experiencing these hardships, they were more likely to feel depressed and get in trouble at school.

Why it matters

Other researchers have found that economic hardship is related to differences in parenting, academic achievement and many other developmental outcomes – but prior studies haven’t always captured the complexities and challenges that struggling families face.

For example, researchers studying links between economic hardship and youth behavioral development have historically looked at family income on a yearly basis. But bills come due weekly or monthly. Our work shows that looking at the annual data alone risks missing an important part of the story: Many families experience brief spells of financial instability.

Our work also shows that teens are acutely affected by economic conditions in their daily lives and understand their families’ circumstances. This has important implications for research. Given that adolescence is a time of major emotional and cognitive changes, our team believes that researchers should center on the perspectives of young people directly affected by economic challenges.

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