Effects of Parenting Stress and Controlling Parenting Attitudes on Problem Behaviors of Preschool Children: Latent Growth Model Analysis

Abstract

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution NoDerivs License. (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0)If the original work is properly cited and retained without any modification or reproduction, it can be used and re-distributed in any format and medium. Purpose: This study was conducted to examine the longitudinal effects of parenting stress and parental control attitudes on problem behaviors in preschool children, using a latent growth model. Methods: Participants were 1,724 pairs of parents and 1,724 preschool children who had completed the panel survey on Korean children (5 th~7th survey panels). Results: An analysis of the multivariate latent growth model of parenting stress, parental control attitudes, and children's problem behaviors suggested that the parents' intercepts for parenting stress influenced their intercepts for parental control attitudes (father: b=.21, p<.001; mother: b=.55, p<.001). In addition, the slopes for fathers' parenting stress was the only aspect that affected the slopes for mothers' parental control attitudes (b=.77, p<.001). Moreover, both the intercepts and slopes of parenting stress and parental control attitudes significantly affected the children's problem behaviors. Conclusion: This study is significant as it provides longitudinal evidence of the impact of parenting stress and parental control attitudes on children's problem behaviors. The findings suggest that accurately assessing changes in parenting stress and parental control attitudes and developing intervention programs to reduce them will be effective in reducing problem behaviors in children.

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“…In children at key stages, the interruption of social and educational activities for many months can have a higher impact on their development. Recent investigations on the consequences of stressful situations in the mental health of small children show that anxiety, depression, lethargy, damaged social interaction and poor appetite are the most usual psychological manifestations, while at the physiological level a weakened immune system can be observed [5][6][7][8] .Recently, Fegert et al 9 established the impact of the phases of the pandemic on the mental health of children and adolescents. They include in their study certain risk factors and difficulties that children have to face in the first phase of the COVID-19 pandemic: children have not been allowed to use the usual playgrounds, social group activities are forbidden, sports clubs are closed, social relationships have been strongly limited to close relatives, contact with peers has been forbidden, school closures, loss of education time, and loss of daily structure.…”

“…In children at key stages, the interruption of social and educational activities for many months can have a higher impact on their development. Recent investigations on the consequences of stressful situations in the mental health of small children show that anxiety, depression, lethargy, damaged social interaction and poor appetite are the most usual psychological manifestations, while at the physiological level a weakened immune system can be observed [5][6][7][8] .…”