Testing the Family Stress Model Across Diverse Family Structures in the United States

Zhao, Yushan
Jensen, Todd M.
Munger, Ashley

Department of Human Ecology, University of California, Davis
School of Education, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Department of Child and Family Studies, California State University, Los Angeles

David J. Bridgett served as action editor.

The data used in this study are publicly available through the National Survey of Children’s Health website at https://www.childhealthdata.org/learn-about-the-nsch/NSCH (Child and Adolescent Health Measurement Initiative, 2022). Analysis code is available upon request from Yushan Zhao. The ideas and findings presented in this article have not been previously disseminated or presented at any conferences, meetings, or online platforms. The data used in this study come from a publicly available data set (National Survey of Children’s Health); while prior studies have used this data set, they have not examined the specific research questions addressed in the present study.

Yushan Zhao played a lead role in conceptualization, data curation, formal analysis, investigation, methodology, project administration, resources, software, supervision, validation, visualization, writing–original draft, and writing–review and editing. Todd M. Jensen played a supporting role in data curation, methodology, software, supervision, validation, visualization, writing–original draft, and writing–review and editing and an equal role in formal analysis. Ashley Munger played a supporting role in conceptualization, methodology, supervision, validation, writing–original draft, and writing–review and editing.

Yushan Zhao, Department of Human Ecology, University of California, Davis, Hart Hall, 301 Shields Avenue, Davis, CA 95616, United States [email protected]

Received November 11, 2024

revised June 23, 2025

Accepted July 30, 2025

Journal of Family Psychology Publish Ahead of Print, September 15, 2025. | DOI: 10.1037/fam0001401

The family stress model (FSM) posits that socioeconomic status affects child developmental outcomes through parental mental health and parenting practices. Although the FSM has been validated in various contexts, there is limited research on its applicability across diverse family structures in the United States. This study uses multigroup structural equation modeling to test the FSM across three family types: biologically connected/adopted two-parent families (T-B/A), stepfamilies (ST), and single-parent families (SP) among a representative sample of children in the United States (N = 28,234; M_age = 12.5 years; 13,671 females and 14,563 males). The results show that family structure moderates three of the nine pathways in the FSM. Specifically, the association between socioeconomic status and parental mental health and the association between parental aggravation and children’s grades are stronger in T-B/A families than in ST and SP families. The association between parental aggravation and children’s mental health is similar between T-B/A families and ST but weaker for SP families. The remaining associations in the FSM are consistent across the three family structures. Overall, these findings confirm the theoretical utility of the FSM across common family structures and also highlight the need to incorporate family structure-related variables, such as stressors unique to ST and SP families.