Maternal reports of child behavior problems and personal distress as predictors of dysfunctional parenting

Abstract

A community sample of 96 mother-child dyads participated in a study evaluating the extent to which directly observed differences in maternal parenting behavior could be predicted on the basis of both global and proximal maternal reports of child behavior problems and personal distress. To allow for simultaneous testing of a set of relations and make tentative causal inferences, a structural equation modeling approach was used. When the analysis was conducted on the entire sample, results indicated that global and to a lesser extent proximal measures of child behavior problems and personal distress made modest contributions to dysfunctional parenting, with neither child behavior problems or personal distress playing a more important role than the other. When the sample was divided into low (n = 54) and high (n = 42) socioeconomic disadvantage (SED) families, a different picture emerged. In low disadvantage families, parenting was most strongly predicted by mothers' proximal reports of their children's behavior; whereas in high disadvantage families, parenting was best predicted by mothers' proximal reports of their own personal distress. Results are interpreted in light of Wahler and Dumas' (1989) attentional hypothesis. It suggests that mothers who do not experience chronic sources of distress (such as SED) attend and respond to their children's behavior in a fairl accurate and consistent manner, but that mothers who experience chronic distress are unable to attend effectively to their children, responding to them often in light of the many stressors to which they are exposed, rather than in light of the children's actual behavior.

A measure of parental stress in mothers with small children: dimensionality, stability and validity

“…This was found to be the case in the two large samples, and this finding of a connection between infancy problems and parental stress is in line with previous findings of depressed mothers reporting more problematic child characteristics (e.g. Dumas & Wekerle, 1995;Webster-Stratton & Hammond, 1988). A discussion of cause-effect in these associations becomes superfluous if stress is viewed as a bidirectional construct (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984).…”

The Construct of Resilience: A Critical Evaluation and Guidelines for Future Work

“…To illustrate, maternal perceptions of behavior problems in children seem to affect the parenting behaviors of mothers low on socioeconomic disadvantage, but not those of chronically disadvantaged mothers. Among the latter, the (frequently high) levels of life stress and personal distress they experience seem to be far more potent in affecting the quality of their parenting (Dumas & Wekerle, 1995).…”

Maternal Emotions During Mother-Toddler Interaction: Parenting in Affective Context

“…Negativity within the family also appears to undermine effective parenting. For instance, research suggests 108 MARTIN, CLEMENTS, CRNIC that parenting is often compromised in families experiencing heightened stress, conflict, or parental depression (e.g., Dumas & Wekerle, 1995;Hart, Field, del Valle, & Pelaez-Nogueras, 1998;Teti, Gelfand, & Pompa, 1990), with heightened family negativity linked to parents' less sensitive and more aversive responding to child behavior.…”

“…However, there has been considerably less appreciation for the emotions experienced by parents in interacting with their children. Although there has been theoretical attention to the affective salience of parenting (e.g., Deutsch, 1945;Dix, 1991Dix, , 2000Stern, 1995) and empirical attention to emotion-relevant constructs such as parenting stress, attitudes, and representations (e.g., Biringen, Matheny, Bretherton, Renouf, & Sherman, 2000;Crnic, Greenberg, & Slough, 1986;Dumas & Wekerle, 1995;Holden, 1995), few studies directly assess parents' subjective experiences during interactions with their children. Furthermore, empirical studies have largely focused on the emotions expressed by parents during interactions with their children, rather than on parents' internal affective experiences per se.…”