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Abstract
Family obligations, which include children’s support and assistance to the family, are a protective or risk factor depending on the context of the environment. Household chaos, a context that disrupts family processes, may interact with family obligations to predict mental and physical health. In a sample of 165 Black and Latinx youth (Mage = 11.5, SD = 2.6) and their primary caregivers, we investigated whether the relation between family obligations and both internalizing symptoms and cardiometabolic risk depended on levels of household chaos. Contrary to hypotheses, for youth experiencing high household chaos, family obligations were negatively associated with internalizing symptoms and cardiometabolic risk. Further, among youth experiencing low household chaos, family obligations were unrelated to internalizing symptoms and positively associated with cardiometabolic risk. Based on these findings, we encourage researchers to consider the nuanced ways in which family dynamics contribute to children’s mental and physical health.