The mediating role of parental psychological health in chinese families in an impoverished context in Hong Kong

Based on data collected from 504 parents in Tin Shui Wai, one of the lowest income-level communities in Hong Kong, the present study found that, in addition to financial strain, cumulative family stressors associated with poverty had deleterious impacts on family functioning and parental psychological health. Furthermore, negative effects of cumulative family stressors on family functioning were significantly shrunk after adding parental self-efficacy as mediator, and became insignificant after adding parenting stress and both parental self-efficacy and parenting stress as mediators. The results of this study are consonant to family stress model and demoralization thesis, postulating that experiencing multiple stressors at family level coalesced with poverty may adversely influence family development and relationships through their detriments on parental psychological health. Implications for service practices were briefly discussed.