Do Caregivers’ Health Conditions Impact Children’s Externalizing Behavior? The Roles of Caregivers’ Parenting Frustration and Family Cohesion

The present study aimed to explore whether caregivers’ parental frustration mediates the relationship between parental health and children’s externalizing behaviors and whether family cohesion potentially moderates this association. Data were derived from the 2016 National Survey of Children’s Health (NSCH), and the total sample for the study included 50,212 adults. We tested the association between caregivers’ parental health and children’s externalizing behavior and whether parental frustration mediated the association between caregivers’ parental health and children’s externalizing behaviors. We performed a Sobel test to determine if the mediation was significant. To test the moderator, we conducted hierarchical multiple regression analyses to explore the interaction effect between caregivers’ parental health and family cohesiveness on children’s externalizing problems. We found a positive association between poor health conditions of caregivers and children’s externalizing behavior. Our findings also showed that parental frustration mediated the association between caregivers’ health conditions and children’s externalizing behavior. And finally, family cohesion was found to moderate the association between caregivers’ health conditions and children’s externalizing behavior. Our findings suggest that to prevent or address children’s externalizing behaviors, it is necessary to improve parental health, increase family cohesion, and reduce parental frustration.