The Influence of Parental Aspirations, Attitudes, and Engagement on Children's Very Low Food Security

Acknowledgments: I thank Mark Nord for patiently answering all of my questions about measuring food insecurity in the SIPP and Qing Wang for research assistance. I received many helpful comments on the project at contract number AG-3198-B-10-0028. The opinions and conclusions expressed herein are solely those of the author and should not be construed as representing the opinions or policies of the UKCPR or any agency of the Federal Government. Abstract: Survey of Income and Program Participation data are used to investigate the relationship between parenting and children's very low food security. Parenting is characterized along five domains (emotional outlook, support, education desires, activities with the child excluding meals, and television viewing rules). Food security definitions are obtained from questions in a special SIPP module that are based on the USDA's core food security module. Graphical evidence indicates that parenting patterns differ distinctly for households experiencing various levels of food insecurity. Descriptive regression evidence suggests that some of the parenting attributes are significantly associated with children's food insecurity, even controlling for a wide variety of background characteristics. Finally, an event-study framework is used to identify causal effects of parenting on food security outcomes. The overall findings are twofold. First, mothers in food-insecure households have a worse outlook on their parental role and the parent-child relationship. However, the evidence indicates that this is likely either reverse-caused (e.g., maternal depression leads to low family resources) or is a response to the stress of being in a low-resource environment. Second, there is some evidence against rejecting the hypothesis that more supportive (nurturing) parental behavior is protective for children in households experiencing a job layoff of an adult member. This is consistent with supportive parenting playing a causal role in children's very low food security. The parent-child relationship profoundly shapes child well-being along many dimensions, but the role it may play in children's food security is understudied. This project uses a large, nationally representative sample of U.S. households to investigate the association between parenting and child food security status. The aim is to better understand the role of parenting in children's food security status in order to paint a more detailed and nuanced view of the food security problem. The quality of the parent-child relationship is hypothesized to affect children's food security in several ways. Parents in a closer relationship with their child possess superior information about the child, including awareness of hunger states. …