It’s widely documented that men are more prone to things like depression and suicide. Research from the University of Michigan highlights how harmful this can be in families that are struggling financially.
The research shows that when men, and especially fathers, suffer from depression, this is strongly linked to destructive conflict and verbal aggression between partners, with this often linked with difficulties in paying bills.
Stressed out
The researchers suggest that this is often due to the societal expectations on the man to be the breadwinner, so any difficulties in alleviating the family’s material hardship will be hard felt by men.
“The breadwinner role has long been considered a defining feature of traditional fatherhood,” the researchers explain. “When fathers feel they aren’t economically providing to alleviate material hardship in their families, that can lead to depression and more conflict with their spouse.”
They believe that their results are especially important as often studies of the role of poverty on family relationships have tended to focus more on mothers than fathers.
“We really didn’t know the role that fathers’ mental health played in key family outcomes for families in poverty,” they explain. “These results show how important it is to understand what is happening with fathers.”
Strong families
The researchers gathered data from the Building Strong Families project, which contained a racially diverse sample of over 2,700 mothers and fathers, all of whom were from low-income households.
The data was interesting because it didn’t just include the family’s income but also their level of material hardship. This is important because it’s something that affects families at various income levels, including those who would ordinarily not be considered poor.
Material hardship was measured by asking volunteers how difficult they found it to pay for essential things, such as medical care and utilities, as well as whether they struggled to pay their rent or mortgage.
The results show that income poverty was not directly related to signs of depression in either mothers or fathers. Material hardship, on the other hand, was, both for mothers and fathers.
“Material hardship seems to do a better job than family income of capturing the links between economic struggles and poor parental mental health,” the authors explain.
Parental struggles
The results show that the more people felt like they were struggling to pay their bills, the more likely the parents were to experience sleep problems, have difficulty concentrating, and generally feel depressed. While both parents would report feeling stressed, however, it was only the fathers’ depressive symptoms that were associated with harmful conflict.
This would sometimes take the form of verbal aggression, such as dismissing a partner’s opinions and feelings or blaming them if things go wrong.
“We found that material hardship itself didn’t directly lead to interpersonal conflict,” the researchers explain. “But material hardship operated indirectly via fathers’ depressive symptoms in its link to higher levels of destructive conflict.”
They believe that their results underline the importance of providing mental health support for fathers in families that are suffering from economic hardship, while also focusing on addressing the material hardship that leads to these mental health problems.
“If basic needs for housing, food, utilities and medical care aren’t sufficiently met, then interventions to help parents manage their conflict is only going to help so much,” the researchers conclude. “The COVID-19 pandemic likely compounded the challenges that many of these families with low income are facing. We need to prioritize making available and connecting families to additional resources.”
