This study investigated associations between parental and child psychopathology with parenting stress as a possible mediator, in order to get more insight in mothers’ and fathers’ roles in the development of psychopathology in children. Parents of 272 clinically referred (aged 6–20, 66% boys) reported about their own and their child’s behavioral problems, and about parenting stress. Data were analyzed using Structural Equation Modeling. Outcomes of path models demonstrated that mothers’ higher internalizing and externalizing problems were associated with respectively children’s higher internalizing and externalizing problems. Fathers’ higher externalizing problems were associated with both children’s higher internalizing and externalizing problems, but fathers’ internalizing problems were only associated with children’s lower externalizing problems. Parenting stress fully mediated the relation between mothers’ and children’s externalizing problems, and partly mediated the relation between mothers’ and children’s internalizing problems. For fathers, parenting stress partly mediated the relation between fathers’ internalizing problems and children’s externalizing problems. Findings indicate that for mothers, the association between parental and child psychopathology is specific, whereas for fathers it is non-specific. Furthermore, results suggest that reducing parenting stress may decrease child problem behavior. Longitudinal studies are needed in order to gain more insight in the direction and underlying mechanisms of the relation between parental and child psychopathology, including parental stress.

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This study examined the role of placement and child characteristics in the unplanned termination of foster placements. Data were used from 169 foster children aged 0 to 20. Results showed that 35% of all foster placement terminations were unplanned. Outcomes of logistic regression analyses demonstrated that behavior problems, parenting stress and a non-Dutch ethnic background of the foster child increased the likelihood of a placement termination. Furthermore, risk accumulation contributed to unplanned terminations. The results indicate that supporting foster parents in managing problem behavior of the foster child and reducing parenting stress may be a key to an effective prevention of disrupted foster care placements.

Background. According to self-determination theory, teachers can support their students' engagement in learning by providing autonomy support and structure. Within classes, however, there appears to be great diversity in the extent to which students experience autonomy and structure.Aims. This study aimed to investigate the degree to which teachers' perceptions of student-specific autonomy support and structure differ between students in their class and whether differentiated need support predicts students' motivation.Sample. Twenty-four elementary school teachers and their students (n = 506) participated in this study.Method. Teachers completed a short questionnaire assessing their perceptions of autonomy support and structure for each student. Students completed two questionnaires assessing perceptions of need support and their motivation. Multilevel analyses were conducted.Results. The results showed that the within-classroom variation in both teacher perceptions and student perceptions of need support was considerably larger than the between-classroom variation. Teacher perceptions of student-specific autonomy support were positively associated with students' autonomous motivation and negatively with students' controlled motivation. However, teacher perceptions of student-specific structure were positively associated with students' controlled motivation.Conclusions. These findings suggest that teachers differentiate in need support. The positive association between teacher perceptions of structure and students' controlled motivation might suggest that teachers may offer structure in controlling rather than autonomy-supportive ways. Furthermore, the relations between need support and students' motivation differed between the class-level and the within-class (student) level highlighting the need for disentangling the effects of need-supportive teaching at different levels and adopting a multilevel approach.