Conceptualizing Food Insecurity. Part 2

Borrowing from the family stress hypothesis (Conger, et al., 1992; McLoyd, 1990) which suggests that the negative impact of economic adversity on adolescent well-being may be both direct and indirect, we contend that food insecurity can be conceptualized as a form of economic hardship. In that vein, food insecurity is likely to elevate levels of parental stress (Weinreb et al., 2002), and parental mental health problems (Siefert, Heflin, Corcoran, and Williams, 2001; Wu and Schimmele, 2005) and adversely affect adolescents nutritional status and health. Specifically, elevated levels of parental mental health problems adversely impact quality of parenting, and ultimately adolescents