The Great Recession was the deepest recession since the Great Depression and was associated with a steep decline in consumer confidence. This paper examines the links between consumer confidence during the Great Recession and 9-year old children’s externalizing behavior, internalizing behavior, vandalism, and drug and alcohol use. The study draws on longitudinal data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a birth cohort study of families interviewed in the hospital at the time of birth and re-interviewed when children were 1, 3, 5, and 9 years old. Data on the Consumer Sentiment Index, a national measure of consumer confidence, are merged with the Fragile Families data by matching on the month and year of each family’s 9-year interview. Also included are a wide range of controls, including city fixed effects and controls for prior child behavioral adjustment. Based on theory and prior research with the family stress model, we estimate separate models for boys and girls and find that the decreased consumer confidence during the Great Recession was associated with increased externalizing, internalizing, vandalism, and drug and alcohol use for boys but not girls, for whom worse consumer confidence is associated with decreased externalizing and drug and alcohol use. Analyses testing the moderating role of family structure indicate that the effects of the Great Recession on child behavior problems are exacerbated for children living with a single mother. Last, analyses of the mediating role of aspects of parenting (harsh parenting, maternal warmth, and maternal depression) suggest that parenting may mediate the association between the Great Recession and boys’ behavior problems among boys living with a single mother.