While reducing food insecurity is a major health initiative, most studies and programs focus only on health-related outcomes and not on other types of hardships. This secondary data analysis of the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study examined the relationship between food insecurity and housing instability with social support, parental depression, and material hardship in vulnerable fathers. Using structural equation modeling on Wave 3 data, the final resulting model was X2 (4, N= 4898) = 3.72 at p = .444. For fathers, material hardship, depression, social support impact the relationship between food insecurity and housing instability. This research has implications for programs and services that may serve low income, single, or minority fathers and families to provide supports to improve food and house instabilities. Agencies and organizations should examine material hardship, not just health-related outcomes. They should provide services for mental health concerns as well as facilitate greater social support.

Because parental alcohol misuse is associated with numerous negative outcomes for drinkers and other family members, it is important to examine factors predictive of alcohol misuse patterns among parents living with at least one child under the age of 18. Two possible factors include economic insecurity and poverty. This study sought to address whether measures of economic insecurity (i.e., housing and/or food insecurity in the past 12 months) and a dichotomous measure of poverty predict parental binge drinking and parental heavy alcohol consumption in a large population-based sample. It was hypothesized that economic insecurity and poverty, analyzed separately, would predict both occurrence of parental alcohol misuse and amount of alcohol consumed. Results did not support hypotheses; rather, where significant, they indicated that measures of economic insecurity and poverty negatively predicted parental alcohol misuse. However, effect sizes were small and preclude practical application. Findings are discussed and future research directions are identified.