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

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.