Maternal gambling, parenting in the home environment, and child outcomes in Native American families

This mixed method study examined the relations between and among women's casino gambling, parenting in the home environment, parenting self-efficacy beliefs, social supports, and child behavior problems in a sample of 150 Native American mothers with a child between 6 and 15 years of age. Respondents were recruited from a tribal casino on a Great Lakes Indian Reservation. Hypotheses were: (1) higher scores on measures of gambling frequency among Native American mothers will be associated with more behavior problems in their children; (2) greater access to emotional and instrumental support, higher parenting self-efficacy, and more adequate parenting in the home environment among Native American mothers will be associated with fewer behavior problems in their children; and (3) greater access to social support, higher parenting self-efficacy, and more adequate parenting in the home environment among Native American mothers will moderate the relationship between maternal gambling and child behavior problems. As expected, correlational analyses indicated that pathological gambling was associated positively and significantly with child behavior problems, while greater access to instrumental support, higher parenting self-efficacy, and more adequate parenting in the home environment were each associated significantly with fewer child behavior problems. Multiple regression analyses revealed that greater maternal financial strain and less adequate parenting in the home environment together explained 9 percent of the variance in child behavior problems and that access to social support from family moderated the relationship between maternal gambling frequency and child behavior problems. Social support from family explained an additional 5 percent of the variance in child behavior problems. Boys were more negatively affected by their mothers' frequent gambling than girls in this study. Qualitative themes were: Mothers' concerns regarding spending money and time at the casino, and guilt and remorse over how these affect their children and families; mothers' reports of the positive economic benefits of the jobs and educational opportunities now available to them; mothers' concerns that while there are increased opportunities to socialize and reduce their stress while gambling, that there is no culturally appropriate gambling treatment program on the reservation.