Parental stress and child mental health: a network analysis of Romanian parents

Abstract

Parental stress is related to child mental health problems, with numerous evidence indicating that it is an important predictor of parenting and parent-child relationship. New approaches to psychopathology could be particularly informative for clinical research, however, there is limited research that employs network analysis with parents. Network analysis could contribute to a better understanding of the relationship between child mental health problems and parental stress by highlighting the most central nodes and how the two constructs influence each other. The scope of the study was to identify potential new intervention targets to reduce the mental health problems of children and prevent contagion between parent stress and child psychopathology. Furthermore, we also sought to test whether the dynamic between parental stress and child psychopathology differs across the level of parent stress and child total difficulties. In this endeavor, we had three main directions. First, we estimated a network at the level of child mental health problems and identified the most central nodes. Second, we mapped the main paths through which parent stress and child mental health problems communicate with each other. Third, we investigated the network invariance across the level of parent stress (high vs moderate) and child mental health problems (low vs. high total difficulties). Participants ( N = 1014) were parents of children with ages between four and 17 years old. The analyses were conducted in RStudio. Results indicated that perceived coping was a central node, bridging the two constructs. The global strength of the network was higher for parents who reported high levels of stress compared to those who reported only moderate levels of stress. In contrast, we found that the global strength of the network was lower for children with high levels of total difficulties compared to those with low levels of total difficulties. In conclusion, we argue the importance of focusing on the targeting nodes with high bridge centrality, such as perceived coping, for designing prevention and intervention programs. Future research should use temporal dynamics between parental stress and child mental health problems and explore mechanisms between the two constructs. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12144-022-03520-1.

Sounding the alarm regarding mental health of children and adolescents in relation to parenting style

“…The finding of the current study revealed that there was a high statistically significant relation between total mental health score and work stress reported by the participating parents. This result was supported by [17,41]. This could be due to the daily life pressures, problems, and challenges faced by working mothers and fathers who spend a long period of time at work and return home full of fatigue, exhaustion, and negative energy that is unconsciously projected onto the children without spending a longer period of time with their children, especially, which negatively affects the mental health of children.…”

Psychometric properties of the Arabic Spence Children’s Anxiety Scale- Parent in a non-clinical sample of Arabic-speaking adults

“…44 Moreover, our ndings, in harmony with previous ones, revealed a strong correlation between parental stress and elevated anxiety in children. 45 The stress experienced by parents, whether it was caused by nancial, health, work or relationship issues, may impact the child's emotional well-being, sense of security and ability to cope with stressors. 46 In addition to parental depression and stress, we concluded an association between parental anxiety and increased anxiety in children, a result that was highlighted by previous studies.…”

Symptom network analysis of parent–child depression and anxiety in treatment-seeking youth.

“…Results showed that parent and child nodes that exhibited the highest centrality and bridge centrality could predict treatment response (Hagan et al, 2023; Monteleone et al, 2023). In another study of parent–child dyads, Păsărelu et al (2023) found that parents’ perceived coping bridged parental stress with child mental health symptoms, suggesting that parental stress may be an important target of intervention programs. The inclusion of parental nodes provides critical information about child symptoms, as well as psychopathology across the dyad, which could inform intervention design and measurement of treatment outcomes.…”