Department of Human Development and Family Science.
J Fam Psychol. 2019 Feb;33(1):121-131. doi: 10.1037/fam0000478. Epub 2018 Nov 26.
Parenting stress can negatively impact mothers and the family unit. Previous research has identified spousal supportiveness as a critical resource in helping reduce maternal parenting stress, whereas other research demonstrates that parenting stress may reduce supportive behaviors over time. However, it is unclear whether the association between spousal supportiveness and maternal parenting stress is robust over an extended period of children's development, or whether economic hardship impacts change in both constructs. Using 4 waves of data from 612 mothers in the Fragile Family and Child Wellbeing study, we explored whether maternal parenting stress was associated with change in spousal supportiveness and whether spousal supportiveness simultaneously was associated with change in maternal parenting stress. We examined these bidirectional associations while accounting for economic hardship. We found parenting stress and perceptions of spousal supportiveness changed at varying rates throughout the 8 years of the study. We also found that when the focal child was 1 year old, perceptions of spousal supportiveness were associated with increases in mothers' parenting stress, whereas when the child was 3 and 5 years old, perceptions of spousal supportiveness were associated with a faster decrease in mothers' parenting stress. Maternal parenting stress was not associated with perceptions of spousal supportiveness over time. We also found that mothers with greater economic hardship showed a slower decline in perceptions of spousal supportiveness compared with the decline in perceptions of spousal supportiveness observed without economic hardship in the model. We conclude by providing both developmental and practical implications for helping mothers. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).
父母压力会对母亲和家庭单位产生负面影响。先前的研究已经确定配偶的支持是帮助减轻母亲育儿压力的关键资源，而其他研究表明，育儿压力随着时间的推移可能会减少支持性行为。然而，目前尚不清楚配偶的支持与母亲育儿压力之间的关联是否在孩子发展的较长时期内是稳健的，或者经济困难是否会影响这两个结构的变化。本研究使用来自脆弱家庭和儿童健康研究的 612 位母亲的 4 波数据，探讨了母亲育儿压力是否与配偶支持的变化相关，以及配偶支持是否同时与母亲育儿压力的变化相关。我们在考虑经济困难的情况下检验了这些双向关联。我们发现，育儿压力和配偶支持感在研究的 8 年中以不同的速度发生变化。我们还发现，当孩子 1 岁时，配偶的支持感与母亲育儿压力的增加有关，而当孩子 3 岁和 5 岁时，配偶的支持感与母亲育儿压力的快速下降有关。母亲的育儿压力与配偶支持感的感知没有随着时间的推移而变化。我们还发现，与没有经济困难的模型相比，经济困难较大的母亲的配偶支持感下降速度较慢。最后，我们为帮助母亲提供了发展和实践方面的启示。（PsycINFO 数据库记录（c）2019 APA，保留所有权利）。
