Social class, social mobility and status differences in marriage: Relevant for child psychiatry?

Summary

A sophisticated composite measure of social status proved to be more appropriate for child psychiatric research than traditional simple indicators such as the father's occupational prestige. However, when the complicated calculation of the combined measure is taken into consideration and weighed against the resulting minor advantages, its use in standard investigations does not seem economically justifiable. A u-shaped nonlinear association was observed between the social status of the parents and their child's psychiatric disorder rating. While Family Adversity Index scores are undoubtedly more valuable predictors of an individual's psychiatric risk, the intimate contents of this instrument make it less suitable for screening purposes than social-class indicators. When measures of social mobility were computed separately for both parents, no influence of the father's intragenerational mobility was detected. Other findings suggest the existence of (at least) two different groups of mothers of children with psychiatric disorders, one group having high depressivity scores, the other showing much upward social mobility. No connections were found between husband-wife differences in social status and their child's psychiatric rating.