Different Hunger Experiences for Parents and Their Children in a family: Long-Term Food Insecurity, Parental Psychological Distress, and Harsh Parenting

Evidence shows that physical violence and verbal aggression toward children is more prevalent in food-insecure families than food-secure families. However, less is known whether such associations are valid when considering food insecurity could be a long-term phenomenon and also different between parents and children. Using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, results based on latent class analysis and mediation analysis showed that the use of scolding is lowest among families where children experience consistently low food insecurity over time. However, this pattern does not extend to spanking. Rather, a reduced use of spanking is observed only when both children and parents maintain low risk of food insecurity across time. Notably, this study also observed that long-term food insecurity is indirectly associated with scolding through parental psychological distress but directly associated with spanking. These findings highlight that different mechanisms explaining harsh parenting behaviors and its variance amid long-term economic hardship.