Racial-Ethnic Differences in Mothers’ Parenting Stress and Its Associations with Depression

Despite awareness of racial-ethnic health inequalities in the United States, research on racial-ethnic differences in mothers' mental health remains scarce. Using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study: 2010-2011 Kindergarten (N = 8,495), this study employs the stress process model to explore racial-ethnic differences in mothers' parenting stress and its associations with depression. To capture the multidimensionality of mothers' parenting stress, I conduct latent profile analysis to identify five types of parenting stress. Mothers' distributions across different types of parenting stress vary by race-ethnicity even when their overall parenting stress levels are similar. The relationships between each type of parenting stress and depression also differ by race-ethnicity. The findings underscore the need to consider different dimensions and types of parenting stress mothers face when studying racial-ethnic disparities in the mental health consequences of motherhood and exploring social inequalities in the relationship between stress and depression.