Coping strategies mediated the relationship between perceived stress and hair cortisol among socioeconomically marginalized parents

This study aimed to (1) examine coping strategies and their relationship with demographics, perceived stress, and hair cortisol; and (2) explore whether coping partially mediated the relationship between perceived stress and hair cortisol. Baseline data from 191 socioeconomically marginalized parents enrolled in two community-based clinical trials were used. The IBM SPSS Statistics Version 27 and Mplus Version 8 were used for data analyses. Parents' engagement in various coping strategies differed by age, ethnicity, race, marital status, education level, and number of children living in the household. Parents' use of problem-focused (instrumental support, planning), emotion-focused (venting, self-blame), and avoidant coping (self-distraction, denial, behavioral disengagement) increased from having low to moderate stress. However, when perceived stress increased from moderate to high, their use of emotion-focused and avoidant coping increased significantly, but problem-focused coping did not. Emotion-focused coping lowered the influence of perceived stress on hair cortisol, while avoidant coping increased the relationship between perceived stress and hair cortisol. Although needing future investigation with longitudinal studies, the results suggest the need of promoting adaptive emotion-focused coping (emotional support, venting, and humor) to help socioeconomically marginalized parents manage their appraised overwhelming and uncontrollable stressors of food, house, and income insecurity.