Parental work and welfare trajectories and adolescent mental health disorders: family stressors and gender differences

Abstract This article investigates the degree to which adolescent mental health disorders (MHDs) are associated with mothers’ and fathers’ work and welfare trajectories during childhood. Recognizing that children in families with weak labor market ties often face multiple disadvantages, the study also examines how the association between specific family stressors – such as lone parenthood, parental dissolution, and co-parent MHDs – and adolescents’ mental health differs across resource-rich and resource-poor trajectories. Using administrative register data, we followed a cohort born in 1999 from ages 5 to 18. Sequence analysis was used to map parental work and welfare trajectories over nine years (from ages 5 to 13), identifying four distinct clusters: stable employment, work and education, early marginalization, and welfare. Logistic Regression with Average Marginal Effects (AMEs) showed a statistically significant increased risk of MHDs (measured at ages 14–18) among adolescents whose parents followed a welfare trajectory, even after adjusting for the other parents’ trajectory, parental age at childbirth, parental mental disorders, mother’s and father’s income in 2003, family cohabitation structure in 2003, and parental educational level in 2003. Analyses comparing the associations between family stressors and adolescents’ MHDs across parental trajectories indicated two high-risk groups: Girls in lone-parent households where the mother followed an early marginalization trajectory, and children experiencing dual parental disadvantage—one parent in a resource-poor trajectory and the other with an MHD. These results point to the need for policies that address multiple, co-occurring sources of vulnerability to reduce the intergenerational transmission of disadvantage.