Association among parents' stress recovery experiences, parenting practices, and children's behavioral problems: a cross-sectional study.

BACKGROUND

Parents can experience much stress from parenting, work, and household responsibilities. Parents' stress recovery experiences, or their lack thereof, can affect parenting practices and influence children's behavioral problems, which may thereby lead to difficulties for children later in life. Therefore, the relationships among these three factors deserve consideration. This study tested a model of the mediating role of parenting practices in the relationship between parents' stress recovery experiences and children's behavioral problems.

METHODS

Parents (N = 1,112) of 14-year-old children in the third year of junior high school in Japan completed a questionnaire, yielding 583 valid responses. To accurately determine the relationship among parents' stress recovery experiences, parenting practices, and children's behavioral problems, parents of children diagnosed with developmental disabilities and parents who did not respond to the required items in the questionnaire were excluded from the analysis. As a result, 536 of the 583 (89.0%) parents met the inclusion criteria. We conducted a path analysis, following the hypothesis that parents' stress recovery experiences, via their parenting practices, are associated with children's behavioral problems.

RESULTS

The path analysis results indicated that parents' stress recovery experiences of relaxation and mastery were positively associated with positive nurturing attitudes, whereas mastery and control were negatively associated with negative nurturing attitudes. Furthermore, positive nurturing attitudes were negatively associated with externalizing and internalizing problem behaviors, whereas negative nurturing attitudes were positively associated with externalizing and internalizing problem behaviors. In other words, the hypothesis that parents' stress recovery experiences of relaxation, mastery, and control reduce children's behavioral problems via promoting nurturing parental attitudes was supported.

CONCLUSIONS

The results indicate that the higher the level of parents' stress recovery experiences, the lower the level of reported children's behavioral problems. Parents' stress recovery experiences correlated with parenting practices, which partially mediated the relationship of the parents' stress recovery with children's behavioral problems. The suggestion is that increasing parents' stress recovery experiences, improving parenting practices and related behaviors, and strengthening the parent-child relationship are important measures that can be mutually beneficial for parents, children, and the overall family relationship.