Financial stress brought about by economic changes in farm communities affects the academic achievement of young adolescents. This effect is mediated by the social support of parents and degree of dissonance in young adolescents relationships with parents. Young adolescents, mothers, and fathers from 105 farm and nonfarm families participated in the study. The degree of financial hardship reported by the adolescents was positively related to their feelings of depression and to the degree of dissonance in their relationships with their parents. Their perceptions of financial hardship was negatively related to the amount of social support they felt from their parents, as well as to their school grade point average controlled for achievement before the farm crisis. Both mothers and fathers reported a significantly greater degree of financial hardship in their families than did their adolescent children, suggesting that they may be protecting their children from this hardship for as long as possible. When the data from the male and female adolescents are examined separately in path models, they indicate that it was primarily the father-son relationship that was affected by financial crisis. (Author/SKW)