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Category: Project

Description: Social exclusion is not a circumstance that only one person suffers from, but rather the whole family can be affected. The family stress model (Conger & Elder, 1994) offers a framework to understand how stressors affect family processes and climate. According to the model, stressors (originally limited to economic pressure) lead to a cascade of parental behavior changes that finally lead to offspring adjustment problems. It has been argued that this model is not just applicable to economic stressors but should also be applicable to a variety of potential stressors. So, the current study aims to investigate via structural equation modelling whether the family stress model is applicable to social exclusion events in terms of whether perceived discrimination affects offspring adjustment problems, such as deviance, through parental distress and disrupted parenting. In addition, we will test the temporal sequence of behavioral changes and whether fathers and mothers contribute differently to the development of offspring adjustment problems in reaction to social exclusion events. Data of about 1.000 families is drawn from the German TwinLife panel study. If social exclusion events lead to a similar cascade of behavior changes, this may provide vital hints for a more generalized model of how stressors affect family dynamics and offspring adjustment problems. A suitable model for explaining the effects of social exclusion on families may have important practical implications to plan specific interventions.