The Material Context of Adolescent Identity Formation: A Family Economic Stress Approach

Abstract

ABSTRACT Grounded in the family stress model and recent studies on cognitive effects of poverty, the current study examines how family material conditions relate to identity-relevant information processing among adolescents via family economic strain, family financial conflicts, and parenting behaviors. Data for the study come from the first wave of a longitudinal study on the development of adolescent goals in the context of socio-economic inequalities. The sample includes 1,268 adolescents (51.7% females; M = 14.87; SD = 0.39) attending 36 gymnasiums. Findings reveal that the family economic situation contributes to how adolescents process identity-relevant information, but these effects are primarily indirect. Specifically, better family material conditions are associated with more supportive parental engagement in their children’s identity-relevant decisions, which in turn is associated with higher levels of the information-oriented identity processing style. Poorer family material conditions, economic pressures, and conflicts are associated with parental interference and a lack of engagement, which in turn is associated with higher levels of diffuse-avoidant identity style. The identity styles themselves are known predictors for a wide array of outcomes. Therefore, our findings suggest that countering the adverse effects of socio-economic inequality may be crucial to break a self-perpetuation cycle of socio-economic adversity.