Association Between Independent Reports of Maternal Parenting Stress and Children’s Internalizing Symptomatology

Abstract

Although considerable research has investigated parenting stress and children's externalizing behavior problems, comparatively less has considered parenting stress in relation to children's internalizing difficulties. Even less research on parenting stress has incorporated children's report of their internalizing symptoms or the potential mediating role of children's attributional style. The current study hypothesized that children's independent reports of internalizing symptoms would be associated with mothers' reports of parenting stress through children's attributional style. A community sample of 92 motherchild dyads participated. Results suggest maternal parenting stress from both child and parent sources were significantly associated with children's anxious and depressive symptoms. Parenting stress was associated with children's internalizing symptoms partially mediated by children's maladaptive attributional style, primarily negative attributions for positive outcomes. Findings are discussed in terms of future directions to tease apart specific areas of parenting stress that may be most pertinent as well as to explore other cognitive mechanisms in children that may relate to parenting stress and children's adjustment.

Families with Distinct Levels of Marital Conflict and Child Adjustment: Which Role for Maternal and Paternal Stress?

“…This result, which confirms the literature (Camisasca et al 2010;Costa et al 2006;Rodriguez 2011), could be explained by considering that maternal stress could be mainly characterized by feelings of worry, preoccupation, and frustration. According to Costa et al (2006), the types of feelings and beliefs included in the component parent-child dysfunctional interaction (e.g., feelings of disappointment in their children and beliefs that their children do not meet their expectations) could promote a negative emotional climate, a reduced maternal responsiveness, and a poor parent-child bond that may prompt anxious and depressed behaviors in children.…”

“…In literature, although the idea that parenting stress has adverse effects on children's well-being is well established (Costa et al 2006;Crnic and Low 2002;Ö stberg and Hagekull 2013;Rodriguez 2011), more recently, some scholars have distanced themselves from the prominent hypotheses that parenting behaviors explain the relationship between parenting stress and children's emotional and behavioral difficulties (Abidin 1992). These authors assign a particularly meaningful role to parenting stress since they detect how it impacts directly the children's adjustment (Anthony et al 2005;Camisasca et al 2010;Crnic et al 2005) without the mediation of parenting behaviors.…”

Parenting Stress through the Lens of Different Clinical Groups: a Systematic Review & Meta-Analysis

“…Overall, research suggests that parenting stress is associated with both child externalizing (Dubois-Comtois et al 2013) and internalizing behavior problems (Rodriguez 2011). However, it is unknown whether parenting stress is differentially associated with externalizing or internalizing behavior problems.…”

“…Cross-sectional findings have demonstrated strong associations between parenting stress and behavioral disorders in early childhood (Anthony et al 2005) and adolescence (Anderson 2008), and longitudinal work has shown child behavioral disorders predict higher subsequent levels of parenting stress over time (Williford et al 2007). In addition to child behavioral disorders, levels of parenting stress have also been shown to be related to child mood disorders, such as depression and anxiety (Rodriguez 2011). However, there are considerably fewer studies examining the relation between parenting stress and child mood disorders, than child behavioral disorders (Östberg and Hagekull 2013).…”

Maternal post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and alcohol dependence and child behaviour outcomes in mother–child dyads infected with HIV: a longitudinal study

“…However, maternal stress and anxiety is negatively associated with parenting skills, and with infant and child behaviour problems 22–24. Maternal anxiety is a significant predictor of child attention and aggression problems25 and maternal stress is significantly associated with anxiety and depressive symptoms in the child 26…”