deater-deckard1998

Parenting Stress and Child Adjustment: Some Old Hypotheses and New Questions Kirby Deater-Deckard, University of Oregon

Individual dfirences in parenting stress, experienced

by most parents as those aversive feelings that are

associated with the demands of the parenting role, have been shown to be an important aspect of parent,

child, and family functioning. A definition of parenting

stress is provided, along with i ts application to more general stress models. Three implicit hypotheses in

much of the past research on parenting stress and be-

havior am evaluated (a) parenting stress i s causally related to poor parenting, (b) poor parenting is causally related to problems in child adjustment, and (c) parent-

ing behavior mediates the associations between pamnt- ing stress and child adjustment. In addition, three quer- tions for future research regarding wlthin-family and

within-indhridual variation in parenting stress are

raised: (a) Is parenting stress genetiully influenced? (b)

Do mothers and fathers show similar or different levels of parenting stress? (c) Is parenting stress ‘child spe- clfic” within families?

Key words: parenting, stress, discipline, psychopa-

thology. fain Psycho1 Sci Prac 5314-332, 19981

It goes without saying that parenthood presents new chal- lenges and rewards. Parenthood holds obvious advantages fiom an evolutionary standpoint (fitness is defined by reproduction) but also provides important social, psychological, and (in some societies) economic benefits. In addition, psychologists have always been interested in the family environment and parenting in particular, given that

Address correspondence to Kirby Deater-Deckard, Ph.D., Department of Psychology 1227, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403-1227.

many psychiatric disorders appear to be fimilial in nature. It is not surprising that a “smooth transition” into parenthood, and low stress in the parenting role throughout the life span, is viewed by most psychologists and psychiatrists as critically important to positive parent and child outcomes.

Specifically, psychological &stress that arises from the demands of parenting has been shown to be a particularly important aspect of the development of dyshnctional parent-child relationships and an important risk factor for adult and child psychopathology. The emphasis of this review is on these psychological costs of parenthood- that is, the stress reaction to the demands ofbeing a parent. The primary aim of this selective review is to shed light on the sources of individual dflerences in parenting stress and how parenting stress influences and is influenced by adult and child psychological adjustment. A definition of parenting stress is proposed, along with its application to a more general psychological and physiological stress model. In addition, three hypotheses implicit in most of the past research on parenting stress, parenting behavior, and child adjustment are considered, and three new questions are proposed.

PARENTING STRESS A N D ADULT FUNCTIONING

Researchen have known for some time that adult psychosocial fbnctioning is intimately linked to individual differences in stresshl life experiences and circumstances. Having more stressful life events has been shown to be correlated with psychosocial adjustment for children and adults (Brown & Harris, 1989; Goodyer, 1990). Life stress is probably “role specific”-that is, stress in the parenting role is qualitatively distinct fiom stress in other distinct domains (see Creasey & Reese, 1996). Although there is likely to be some spillover across these domains (e.g.,

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between work-related and parenting-related stress and coping; see Bamett, Marshall, & Singer, 1992). parenting stress may make a unique prediction to adjustment in adulthood and, more importantly, may be more strongly related to parenting behavior and child adjustment than individual differences in more general stressfu! life events and circumstances (Creasey & Reese, 1996; Quittner, Glueckauf, &Jackson, 1990). For these reasons, exploring parenting stress is critically important to our understanding of family dysfunction and individual differences in normal behavior and psychopathology, given that all children have care-givers and most children become parents.

Happily, for most parents the experience of parenthood is a positive one overall. For example, a mother’s positive mood regarding her new infant increases in the months following the child’s birth (Fleming, Ruble, Flett, & Van Wagner, 1990; Moss, Bolland, Foxman, & Owen, 1986). However, this same period following the arrival of the new family member can be marked by increased conflict and negativity within family relationships, evidenced as a decrease in marital satisfaction for some mothers and fathers (Lavee, Sharlin, & Katz, 1996; Rubing, Fleming, Hackel, & Stangor, 1988; Schumm & Bugaighis, 1986) and, in about 10-15% of cases, as clinical levels of depression for both women and men (Ballard & Davis, 1996; O’Hara & Swain, 1996). From childbirth onward, parenthood presents new demands that carry some risk for stress that can lead to decrements in psychological health and well-being.

Central to a definition of parenting stress is the parent’s perceptions of having access to available resources for meeting the demands of parenthood (including knowledge about, and competence at, the day-to-day as well as long-term tasks of parenting), relative to the perceived demands of the parenting role (Deater-Deckard & Scam, 1996), that is, when expectations do not match perceptions of available resources (see Goldstein, 1995). Parent- ing is therefore hypothesized to be more “stressful” for parents who have less knowledge, less perceived competence, and fewer emotional and instrumental supports (e.g., “help” from partners, family members, and fiends) and, perhaps most importantly, when the parent views the child or children as being behaviorally difficult (Mash & Johnston, 1990).

Parenting stress can be defined as the aversive psychological reaction to the demands of being a parent. Parent- ing stress can not be indexed by a single measure but is

instead represented as a complex process linking (a) the task demands of parenting, (b) the parent’s psychological well-being and behavior, (c) the qualities of the parent- child relationship, and (d) the child’s psychosocial adjustment. Parenting stress is experienced as negative feelings toward the self and toward the child or children, and by definition these negative feelings are directly attributable to the demands of parenthood.

Some intervention studies have focused on parents who are identified as having poor parenting and coping skills, either because they themselves have been clinically referred, or because their children have been referred. Reducing levels of parenting stress is important not only for improving the psychological health of the parent but also because it may improve the efficacy of interventions that are targeting the child’s behavioral problems (Kazdin, 1995). The handful of intervention studies that have focused on explicit measures of parenting stress have shown that levels of parenting stress can be reduced through cognitive and behavioral therapies, particularly if the intervention has a parent education component (Anastopoulos, Shelton, DuPaul, & Guevremont, 1993; Dihoff et al., 1994; Felner et al., 1994; McBride, 1991; Pisterman et al., 1992; Telleen, Herzog, & Kilbane, 1989; but see Winton, 1990). The effect sizes from these studies are ofien substantial (usually at least one half of a standard deviation difference between the treatment and control groups). Whether the amelioration of parenting stress is durable remains to be seen, depending on the results of long-term follow-up studies that still need to be con- ducted.

Although much of the research on parenting stress has focused on referred parents or children, there is mounting evidence that parenting stress varies continuously from low to very high levels: All parents experience parenting stress to some degree (Crnic & Greenberg, 1990). Fur- thermore, it appears that the more mundane, day-to-day “hassles” of parenting may actually be more strongly related to individual and firmly functioning than parenting-related stressful events, some of which are quite rare in the population (Creasey & Reese, 1996). Thus, although parenting stress is related to adult psychopathology, parenting stress is not thought to be epiphenomenal. Instead, parenting stress can be thought of as “normal” or “extreme” and is also thought to be distinct from other domains of stress and specific domains of adult and fam-. ily functioning.

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A GENERAL THEORY OF PARENTING STRESS

Applying a general theory of psychological or physiological stress is useful for understanding the complex processes that link the demands of parenting, stress in the parenting role, and parenting behavior. The stress process includes four components: (a) an external, causal went or agent; (b) a cognitive appraisal of this event or agent to determine whether it is noxious or not; (c) coping mechanisms to reduce the noxiousness of this event or agent; and (d) con- sequential effects on the mind and body, or the stress reaction (Lazarus, 1993).

The Child and Parenting Role as Causal Agents

A theory of parenting stress must posit the external causal event as “parenthood,” or the causal agent as the child or children for whom the parent has ultimate responsibility. The dependency of an infant on its adult caregivers presents a complex set ofdemands on parents not experienced before the arrival of a child-demands for food, comfort, and attention made by crying, for instance-that are stresshl to most parents. Children become more autono- mous as they develop, but they continue to place demands on their parents-demands that are not faced by childless adults. Similarly, parents must continuously meet their own needs while they meet the demands of the social role of parenthood (Alexander & Higgins, 1993), for example, the expectation that the parent will make an investment in the care and rearing of the child to the benefit of the larger society. These social expectations are arguably at the heart of many family issues, for instance, whether women of young children should work outside the home, whether children should be cared for by nonparental caregivers, or whether maintaining household f d y structure should take precedent over parental happiness in the case of marital conflict and dissolution.

Appraisal

When given an external agent or agents (the child and the social role of parenthood), there are individual differences between families (and possibly differences between cul- tures) in parents’ cognitive appraisals of stressors. Attribu- tions about the sources of a child’s noxious behaviors are critically important (Dix, 1993), with inferences of greater child responsibility and intention for misbehaviors leading to an enhanced parenting stress reaction (Dix, Ruble, & Zambarano, 1989). Parents-even those within the same family-have different views about the appropriateness of

child misbehaviors and the sources of these behaviors. It is not surprising that the correlations between mothers’ and fathers’ reports of child behavior problems are some- times only modest or moderate in magnitude and do not converge very highly with teachers’ ratings (see Achen- bach, McConaughy, & Howell, 1987).

This is not to say that there are not any universally stressful aspects of children and parenthood, however. Most adults find certain types of infant cries to be highly aversive (Frodi & Lamb, 1980; Zeslund, Sale, Maio, Hun- tington, & Weiseman, 1985), and there are also generally universal views of physical attractiveness based on bilateral symmetry and the lack ofphysical anomalies (Thornhill & Gangestad, 1994). However, individual differences in parents’ appraisals of stressors are far more important to our understanding of parenting stress, given that these individual differences in the stress reaction are probably most important to our understanding of individual differences in parents’ psychosocial adjustment.

Coping Mechanisms Cognitive attributes of the parent, particularly coping strategies, are an integral part of parenting stress. Being prepared for a pregnancy is associated with lower amounts of parenting stress (Sommer et al., 1993). Passive, emotionally focused coping strategies such as denial and rumi- nation are maladaptive coping strategies that are related to greater parenting stress (Barnett, Hall, & Bramlett, 1990; Miller et al., 1992). In contrast, positive parental beliefsys- te rn (Frey, Greenberg, & Fewell, 1989) and problem- focused coping strategies (Miller, Gordon, Daniele, & Diller, 1992) are associated with lower levels of parenting stress. Adaptive coping mechanisms not only dampen the stress reaction, but also dampen the effects of the stress reaction on qualities of the parent-child relationship (i.e., coping mechanisms mediate the relation between parenting stress and the quahty of the parent-child relationship). For example, Jarvis and Creasey (1991) found that the use of positive reappraisal was related to a lower correlation between parenting stress and infant attachment security. Thus, a positive coping style is probably a crucial protective factor against potential problems in parenting behavior arising fiom increased parenting stress.

Stress Reaction The resulting stress reaction is readily observed as the parents’ behavior and affect. Most studes of parenting stress

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have focused on the impact of stress on parenting behavior (e.g., discipline) and feelings toward the child (e.g., negativity and warmth), but it is likely that the stress reaction is more general, influencing the parents’ overall psychological well-being.

There are some studies that have demonstrated links between stable characteristics of parents and parenting stress. Higher parenting stress has been linked to depression (Anastopoulos, Guevremont, Shelton, & DuPaul, 1992; Gelfand, Teti, & Fox, 1992), separation anxiety (Deater-Deckard, Scarr, McCartney, & Eisenberg, 1994), type-A personality (Forgays, 1992), and drug use (Kelley, 1992). Psychopathology and personality are likely moderators of the links between social and economic disadvantage and parenting stress (Gelfand et al., 1992). with higher levels of psychopathology exacerbating the effects of these stressful circumstances on parenting stress.

The availability and accessibility of emotional support are crucial ingredients in positive adaptation to parenting, whereby support buffers the individual from the negative effects of these stressors. Parenting stress is lower for parents who have more perceived emotional and instrumental support from their partners, family members, and friends (Abidin & Brunner, 1995; Roggman, Moe, Hart, & Forthun, 1994), although this relation may be culturally bound (see Pearson & Chan, 1993) and may depend on the gender of the parent (Deater-Deckard & Scarr, 1996).

The social support-parenting stress link is particularly important for identifiable high-risk groups of parents. Adolescent mothers are at risk for high levels of parenting stress (Passino et al., 1993), but emotional support, and in particular support from &ends, is related to lower parenting stress for these young mothers (Richardson, Bar- bour, & Bubenzer, 1995). Social support may also be associated with lower parenting stress among other risk groups, such as economically disadvantaged parents (Ada- makos et al., 1986) and parents ofchronically ill or handicapped children (Frey et al., 1989; Hauenstein, 1990). Having sufficient social support may prevent an elevation in parenting stress from negatively affecting parenting behavior (Rodgers, 1993) and may ameliorate the increase in parenting stress that arises from more general life stress (Nakagawa, Teti, &Lamb, 1992). Marital satisfaction, particularly among women, may also reduce the link between parenting stress and parenting behavior (Deater- Deckard & Scarr, 1996; Webster-Stratton, 1988). Sup-

port, particularly from a spouse or partner, may also buffer parents from the negative effects of having a child who is seriously ill (Frank et al., 1991) or from the effects ofthe parents’ own psychopathology (Koeske Si Koeske, 1990). Alternately, social support may not serve as a buffer (a sta- tistical moderator) but may instead directly mediate the relation between parenting stress and parental adjustment (see Quittner et al., 1990).

PARENTING STRESS, PARENTING BEHAVIOR, A N D C H I L D DEVELOPMENT: THREE HYPOTHESES

Theories of the determinants of parenting behavior often include the proposition (explicitly or implicitly) that the psychological stress reaction-most often indexed by global measures of the psychological adjustment of the parent-manifests itself in inept parental behavior (see Abidin, 1992; Belsky, 1984). This deterioration in the quality of parenting behavior, in turn, may lead to problems in emotional, behavioral, cognitive, and physicd development for the child.

Common to most of these theories of parenting stress and behavior are three testable hypotheses regarding the role of parenting stress in child psychopathology. The first hypothesis is that parenting stress causally influences parenting behavior, such that parents who are more stressed show poorer parenting. Those high in parenting stress will be less responsive, more authoritarian, and possibly neglecthl or abusive in extreme cases, because highly stressed parents are more likely to abandon planful, child- centered parental behavior and to rely instead on reactive, adult-centered behaviors. The second hypothesis is that this deterioration in the positive aspects of parenting behavior will causally influence children’s behavior, whereby increases in inept parental behavior will lead to poorer cognitive and social-emotional development outcomes for the child. The third hypothesis is that individual differences in parenting behavior will mediate the association between parenting stress and child outcome-that is, parenting behavior is the proximal process that produces the effects of parenting stress on child outcomes.

Hypothesis 1: Parenting Stress Causes Poor Parenting There have been numerous studies of the links between parenting stress and parenting behavior, all of which converge on the finding that parenting stress and parenting behavior covary, with more stress associated with poorer parenting behavior. Most research of this kind has empha-

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sized global indicators of stress such as family income and employment and the degree of covariation between socioeconomic circumstances and parenting behavior (Dodge, Pettit, & Bates, 1994). Having adequate economic resources is linked to parenting behavior in part through its impact on stress in the parenting role, although this mediation through parenting stress is ofien not measured directly. Family income, education, and job satisfaction have all been shown to be negatively correlated with parenting stress (Baldwin, Brown, & Milan, 1995; Bar- nett, Marshall, & Sayer, 1992).

More recently, research on parenting stress and parenting behavior has focused on the more proximal psychological stress reaction of the parent by directly measuring parents’ feelings about themselves and their children. Regardless of the precise nature of the measure of the stress reaction, these studies have shown that parents who report higher levels of parenting stress are more likely to be authoritarian, harsh, and negative in their parenting (Belsky, Woodworth, & Crnic, 1996; Conger, Pat- terson, & Ge, 1995; Deater-Deckard & Scam, 1996; Rod- gers, 1993; Stoiber & Houghton, 1994) and less involved with their children (McBride & Mills, 1994). These stressed parents are less likely to provide adequate stimulation for their child or children through social interactions (Adamakos et al., 1986) and are more likely to have a child with an insecure attachment relationshlp (Jarvis & Creasey, 1991; Teti, Nakagawa, Das, & Wirth, 1991). Not surprisingly, parenting stress has been implicated as a critically important factor in the etiology of child abuse and neglect (Chan, 1994; Holden & Banez, 1996; Mash & Johnston, 1983). It is possible that the inaccessibility of planhl, child-centered parenting behaviors becomes critical in the face of psychological distress.

Hypothesis 2: Poor Parenting Causes Maladjustment in Children A review of the vast literature on parenting and child adjustment is beyond the scope of this article. However, several reviews have pointed to the consistent finding of a modest to moderate correlation between parenting behavior and child adjustment, both in unselected (e.g., community) and selected (e.g., clinical) samples. These studies have shown that higher amounts of maladjustment among children and adolescents is positively associated with higher amounts of harsh, negative, and inconsistent

parenting (Maccoby & Martin, 1983; Patterson, Reid, & Dishion, 1992; Rothbaum & Weisz, 1994). Authoritative parenting (warm and involved with moderate amounts of control) has been linked to the most positive outcomes in the cognitive and social-emotional domains of development (Baumrind, 1993). The processes linking warm parenting that includes moderate levels of control, to positive adjustment for the child is through the child’s internalization of social rules (Kochanska, 1994) and, more generally, through the child’s feelings of being loved and accepted by his or her parents (Rohner, 1986). Accordingly, parenting that is harsh and cold decreases the likelihood that the child will sufficiently internalize rules of conduct and is likely to lead to feelings ofrejection. Harsh, inept, parent- centered behavior provides many opportunities for children to learn aggressive approaches to social relationships through operant conditioning and modeling (Dodge et al., 1990; Patterson et al., 1992).

It is important to make a distinction between the more general domains of parenting, such as warmth, negativity, or control, and specific parenting behaviors such as using reasoning or spanking. There is evidence that the correlates of these specific parenting behaviors may be culturally bound, perhaps due to cultural group differences in the values that are placed on these parenting behaviors. The use of physical discipline, for instance, has been shown to be unrelated to externalizing, aggressive behavior among Afiican-American children but to be positively correlated with such behavior problems among European-American children (Deater-Deckard, Dodge, Bates, & Pettit, 1996). Similarly, the specific behaviors found among authoritative parents (eg., encouraging achievement, using reasoning) may not be related to achievement motivation and academic success in the same ways for ethnic majority and minority children and adolescents (Basic Behavioral Science Task Force of the National Advisory Mental Health Council, 1996).

There appears to be initial evidence for meaningful cultural group differences in parenting norms that influence what a child construes from his or her parents’ behaviors. According to this view, it is the meaning that a chlld applies to physical discipline, for example, that is important in the influences that such parenting behavior has on the child (Deater-Deckard & Dodge, 1997). If a child views this behavior as harsh and rejecting, then it is more likely to have negative consequences for the child;

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alternately, if the child does not view it in this way, the effects will be different. There is some research showing that children’s views of parental behavior mediate the links between parenting and child adjustment, with feelings of rejection forming the critically important mediation between parent and child behavior (Rohner, Kean, & Cournoyer, 1991). A skeptic could argue that these findings are an artifact, whereby the most common measures of “positive” and “harsh” parenting are based on Euro- pean middle-class views (Kelley, Power, & Wimbush, 1992), or that there are not any meaningful cultural group differences within the United States in the processes linking parenting and child behavior (Rowe, Vazsonyi, &

Flannery, 1994). More research that focuses on children’s perceptions of parenting behavior is needed before clear conclusions can be made.

Hypothesis 3: Parenting Behavior Mediates the Link Between Stress and Child Adjustment An implicit assumption of most of the research on parenting and child development is that parenting behavior is a proximal mediator of more distal stressors, such as social and economic disadvantage (Dodge et al., 1994) and parental conflict (Emery, 1982).

Despite the assumption that parenting behavior mediates the relation between parenting stress and child adjustment, there has been surprisingly little research that has explicitly tested this mediation hypothesis. One large study of dual-earner couples with young children showed support for the hypothesis (Deater-Deckard & Scarr, 1996), with higher amounts ofparenting stress being correlated with more authoritarian parental mscipline behavior, which was in turn correlated with more behavior problems among children. Another recent study also found evidence for this hypothesis (Conger et al., 1995), although the measure of parenting stress in this study was based on life events and not a measure of psychological distress in the parenting role.

It seems likely that this hypothesis is sound given the evidence for the mediating role of parenting behavior in research on “at risk” groups of parents. For example, the impact of depression in mothers on children’s adjustment has been shown to be mediated, in part, through maternal behavior, with depressed mothers showing less responsive and involved parenting behavior (Downey & Coyne, 1990). However, this third hypothesis-that parental

behavior is the critical proximal process linking parenting stress and child adjustment-still requires rigorous testing.

VARIATION W I T H I N F A M I L I E S A N D I N D I V I D U A L S : THREE QUESTIONS ABOUT PARENTING STRESS

The emphasis in research on parenting stress to date has been almost exclusively on group differences (e.g., parents with and without behaviorally disordered children) and individual differences in parenting stress and behavior. The focus has been on variation betweenjzmilies, at the expense of considering variation witkinfamilies and withiti individuals, both of which may be critically important to our understanding of the parenting stress reaction and its links to parent and child adjustment.

Variation Within Families: Are There Child Effects and Genetic Mediation? Because we spend most of our first two decades of life in the direct care and supervision of parents, the role of parental behavior in healthy and maladaptive cognitive, social, and emotional development has been a central focus of our theories. There is no doubt, based on the vast literature, that patterns of parent-child interaction are familial (i.e., are more similar within than between families) and are transmitted fi-om one generation to the next. Characteristics of the grandparent generation (including personality and psychopathology, parenting stress, and child management techniques) and family circumstances (e.g., social class, life events) are correlated with the same factors in the parent generation. Most theorists have focused on environmental transmission through socialization (i.e., learning) processes (Baumrind, 1993), although it is now clear that genetic transmission of behavior from one generation to the next is critically important (Plomin, 1994; Scarr, 1992, 1993).

The three hypotheses highlighted above make explicit the causal mechanisms linking parenting stress, parenting behavior, and child adjustment. However, one testable alternative is that the individual’s current psychosocial adjustment (i.e., personality and psychopathology) is a common cause of both parenting stress and parenting behavior, and through genetic transmission, child adjustment. Parenting stress and parenting behavior may or may not be important mediators ofthe relation between parent adjustment and child adjustment. Instead, according to


this view, the similarity in the psychological adjustment of parents and their offspring may be due to the genetic similarity of parents and their offspring (see Scarr, 1992,

Quantitative genetic studies of normal and abnormal behavior have demonstrated that for most aspects of normal and abnormal behavior, genetic factors are present and account for about half of the variance, on average (McGuffin, Owen, O’Donova, Thapar, & Gottesman, 1994; Plomin, 1994). More important, family environments-including parental behavior-are also genetically influenced (Plomin, Hetherington. Reiss, & Howe, 1994), so the correlations found between indicators of parenting stress, parenting behavior, and child behavior may be due to common genes. For example, although parental negativity and adolescent depressive symptoms have been shown to be correlated in phenotypic studes, genetic factors appear to mediate the negativity- depression correlation, whereby genetic factors for adolescent depressive symptoms may also be in part responsi- ble for parental negativity (Pike, McGuire, Reiss, Hetherington, & Plomin, 1996). Similarly, Fischer (1990) has suggested that the elevation in parenting stress found among parents of children diagnosed with attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder may be due to genetic covariance between parenting stress and child behavior.

This shared genetic covariance between parenting and child adjustment is actually not too surprising, given what we already know about the role of individual differences in chldren’s attributes on parental behavior-commonly referred to as child eflects. To this end, Abidin (1983) has made the very important distinction between “parent domain” and “child domain” parenting stress, to distin- guish between aspects of parenting stress that are specific to parental attributes (i.e., personality and psychopathology) and child attributes. In general, the severity of symptoms of child illness, behavioral problems, or emotional disturbance is more strongly related to the child domain of parenting stress, and individual differences in parental adjustment and stressful life events appear to be more closely linked to the parent domain of parenting stress (Bendell, Stone, Field, & Goldstein, 1989; Boyce, Behl, Mortensen, & Akers, 1991; Eyberg, Boggs, & Rodri- guez, 1992).

Research that has explored the covariation of child domain parenting stress and child adjustment has shown a link between the two. It is clear that higher amounts of

1993).

parenting stress are found among parents of children who are showing early signs of psychopathology. Most affected are parents of children with externalizing behavioral problems, such as conduct disorder and attention deficit- hyperactivity disorder (Anastopoulos et al., 1992; Baker & McCal, 1995; Breen & Barkley, 1988; Campbell, 1994; Creasey & Jarvis, 1994; Creasey & Reese, 1996; Donenb- erg & Baker, 1993; Dumas, Wold Fisman, & Culligan, 1991; Fischer, 1990; Forehand, Furey, & McMahon, 1984; Mash &Johnston, 1983). Parenting stress is also higher for parents of children with more difficult temper- aments (and especially if the mother is depressed; Beebe, Casey, & Pinto-Martin, 1993; Gelfand et al., 1992), autis- tic children (Dumas et al., 1991; Hoppes & Hams, 1990), and children with physical disabilities (Beckman, 199 1; Dyson, 1993; Dyson, Edgar, & Crnic, 1989). Similarly, parenting stress is higher among parents of children with congenital diseases like cystic fibrosis and heart disease (Crist et al., 1994; Darke & Goldberg, 1994; Goldberg et al., 1990; Hauenstein, 1990; Quittner, DiGirolamo, Michel, & Eigen, 1992), respiratory illnesses such as asthma (Carson & Schauer, 1992; but see also Phipps & Drotar, 1990), and developmental delay and cognitive impairment (Fuller & Rankin, 1994; Innocenti, Huh, & Boyce, 1992; On; Cameron, Dobson, & Day, 1993; Pear- son & Chan, 1993; Singer, Song, Hill, & Jaffe, 1991). Although there have been no life-span studies ofparenting stress, it is likely that if the child’s behavioral or health problems are chronic or persistent (e.g., physical disabilities, mental retardation), there will be a cumulative effect of parenting stress over the entire life course for the parent. For such parents, high levels of parenting stress are probably not transient. A handful of studies with different samples have demonstrated that individual differences in parenting stress are highly stable over time (see Abidin, 1990; Deater-Deckard, Pinkerton, & Scarr, 1996; Dyson, 1993). However, far more longitudinal studies of this kind are needed before any conclusions can be made regarding the cumulative nature of parenting stress effects.

There are two important caveats to this general finding, however. First, unlike other aspects of child development, sensory and communication impairment have not been conclusively linked to parenting stress (Chaffee et al., 1991; Hanson & Hanline, 1990; Meadow-Orlans, 1994). Second, the impact of child problems in adjustment or health on parenting stress may be mediated by the parents’ attitudes about the social stigma of having a child with

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health or behavioral problems. For example, among parents of children with disabilities, parenting stress is higher among those parents who feel stigmatized by the child’s disability (Baxter, 1989).

Thus, child attributes contribute to parenting stress in very important ways. Because stress in the parenting role is associated with the quality of the parent-child relationship, understanding those child-based factors that contribute to higher amounts of stress for the parent is crucial to elucidating the processes linking parent and child behavior. Although most of the research on family socialization has emphasized the effects ofparenting behavior and affect on children, it is of paramount importance to address the inherent bidirectionality of parent-child interactions; parent and child behaviors can be viewed as “actions” as well as “reactions” (Bell & Chapman, 1986; Sameroff, 1975). There is empirical evidence for child effects on parental behavior (see Bell & Harper, 1977; Maccoby & Martin, 1983). Researchers have found that effective parents are sensitive to their children’s responses to earlier parental behavior. An example of this is the establishment of recip- rocal dyadic interaction between a mother and her new- born (Cohn & Tronick, 1988), whereby well-functioning mother-infant dyads are characterized by maternal responsiveness to cues from the infant, and vice versa (Lester, Hoffman, & Brazelton, 1985). In laboratory research, children’s dependence and activity levels have been shown to predict more directive parental behavior, and a child’s attentiveness to an adult has been linked to the adult’s positive attention toward that child (Bell & Chapman, 1986). Research on oppositional behavior among conduct-disordered boys has demonstrated that these children may be “driving” the negative interactions with their parents (Anderson, Lytton, & Romney, 1986). There is also evidence that parents react differently to the behavior of boys and girls (Lytton & Romney, 1991; Maccoby & Martin, 1983).

These child effects may become more pronounced over time, because children develop greater self-control and awareness as they mature cognitively and emotionally (Maccoby, 1984). Maccoby notes that the parent-child dyad enters a period of “co-regulation” from early childhood to puberty, when child autonomy increases dramati- cally. As children grow older, parents use less physical punishment and more reasoning and contractual discipline, largely in response to the children’s changing com- petencies (Kuczynski, Kochanska, Radke-Yarrow, &

Girnius-Brown, 1987). As they mature, children also become more selective in those environments and experiences to which they are exposed-they select their friends, hobbies, and interests and do so in a way that is consistent with their existing characteristics (Scarr & McCartney, 1983).

Thus, parenting stress may include a “child-based” and a “parent-based” component-that is, two correlated but qualitatively distinct domains of stress that are differen- tially related to parent and child adjustment, but that are both essential components of the parenting stress reaction. Because individual differences in child behavior plays an important role in the development of parenting stress, future research should consider not only those observable child and parent “effects” in parent-child transactions but should also consider the underlying genetic and environmental factors that mediate these phenotypic correlations between parenting stress, parenting behavior, and child adjustment.

Variation Within Parent Dyads: Are Dads Stressed Too?

Remarkable changes in the social and instrumental roles of men and women in the past century have led to an increased emphasis on shared care-giving, as well as shared breadwinning (Lamb, 1987; Russell, 1986). However, the sea change in attitudes has not always amounted to com- parable shifts in men’s behaviors, that is, their involvement in the day-to-day tasks of care-giving. Like their male ancestors, today’s Western fathers still interact less fre- quently with their children than do mothers, and men usually do not hold primary responsibility for the care of children, even in those families where both parents have full-time jobs outside of the home (Scarr, Phillips, & McCartney, 1990). However, it is noteworthy that there is considerable variation in the degree of paternal involvement in daily care-giving-perhaps greater variability than in past eras. Greater involvement is found for fathers who have more flexible sex-role orientations, who are happier in their jobs, and who have positive relationships with their own fathers (Grossman, Pollack, & Golding, 1988; Levy-Shiff & Israelashvili, 1988; Radin & Harold- Goldsmith, 1989; Volling & Belsky, 1991).

Despite this robust gender difference in care-giving, parent gender is only modestly related to levels of parenting stress, with mothers reporting slightly higher levels of stress than fathers in some, but not all, studies. Several studies, some of high-risk groups of parents of chronically


ill children or children with behavior problems, have shown that mothers and fathers are more similar than different in their mean levels of stress and anxiety in the parenting role (Baker, 1994; Creasey & Reese, 1996; Deater-Deckard et al., 1994; Deater-Deckard & Scarr, 1996; Krauss, 1993; Perry, Sarlo-McGarvey, & Factor, 1992; but see Beckman, 1991).

This gender similarity in levels of parenting stress raises the interesting possibility that, within any family, it is difficult to predict whether the mother or the father will be more or less stressed than the other. Studies that have measured parenting stress in both parents have shown that partners’ levels of parenting stress are correlated (Deater- Deckard & Scarr, 1996). Therefore, although there may not be gender differences in the levels of parenting stress within a population, mothers and fathers are somewhat similar in their levels of parenting stress within eachfamily.

An important caveat is that whether the mother or father has more parenting stress may depend on who you ask. In one study of parenting-related anxieties (Deater- Deckard et al., 1994), fathers’ perceptions of their partners’ anxieties were strongly correlated with perceptions of their own anxieties, and not their partners’ self- reported anxieties. In addition, these fathers invariably rated their partners as being more anxious than themselves, a mean difference that was not found in their partners’ self-reported anxieties.

Although the levels of parenting stress may not differ very much for women and men, the correlates may be quite different. Noppe, Noppe, and Hughes (1991) con- ducted a short longitudinal study following a small sample of expectant couples through the transition to parenthood. The quality of the observed parent-child interactions was highly predictable for the fathers, based largely on their antenatal expectations of stress and lack of power in-the parenting role; in contrast, little prediction was found for the mothers. Several studies of the parents of disabled children have also shown that parent gender moderates the covariation of parenting stress and attributes of the child’s disablements (e.g., type of disability, severity; Frey et al., 1989; Krauss, 1993; Margalit, Shul- man, & Stuchiner, 1989). However, several studies have reported very few gender differences in the covariation of parenting stress and parenting-related anxieties, parental adjustment and behavior, and child adjustment (Deater- Deckard & Scarr, 1996; Deater-Deckard et al., 1994; Lavee et al., 1996).

This raises the possibility that gender differences in the levels and correlates of parenting stress emerge only within certain family contexts, for instance, in those families where there is chronic stress and adversity. That is, the covariation of parental stress, behavior, and child behavior may vary for different types of parents, children, and families. There is some evidence for this based on research on gender effects and marital happiness. Because the quality of the marital relationship is of paramount importance to the psychological health of married men and women (Goldberg, 1993), it is not surprising that marital dishar- mony and conflict are closely linked to a disruption in parenting behavior (Belsky, Rovine, & Fish, 1989; Emery, 1982). There is an indication that unhappily married men may withdraw or become more harsh and negative, such that the links between parental stress and behavior, and in turn child behavior problems, are increased. In contrast, an unhappy marriage for women may predict a com- pensatory process, whereby the links between parental stress and negative parenting become weaker (Deater- Deckard & Scarr, 1996; Gable, Belsky, & Crnic, 1992). Women’s parenting stress may be more strongly related to attributes of the child or children, whereas men’s parenting stress may be most strongly related to satisfaction in the marital relationship (Stoneman, Brody, & Burke, 1989).

What might explain gender differences in the effects of marital happiness on the links between parenting stress and behavior? Barnett and Baruch (1987) specift two competing hypotheses. The social role hypothesis is that sex differences in parenting stress and behavior are due to socialization pressures from an early age. Accordingly, men and women who are more similar in their work and family roles (including involvement in household tasks, care-giving, and breadwinning) will appear to be more similar in parenting stress and behavior. The alternate sex role hypothesis is that gender differences are biological in nature, with gender (and not gender-role or sex-role orientation, i.e., masculinity/femininity) explaining the differences found in men’s and women’s parenting stress and behavior. There are known gender differences in the physiological indicators of the stress reaction (see Pole- frone & Manuck, 1987), although these sex differences in physiological indicators may be explained, in part, by individual differences in sex-role orientation and gender stereotyped behaviors (see Frankenhaeuser, 1991). Future research on parenting stress must take sex-role orientation


and “gender” into account when considering such sex group differences.

Variation Within the individual: Is Parenting Stress “Child Specific“ in Multiple-Sibling Families? As described above, the impact of the parent’s perceptions of a child’s noxious behaviors is a critically important aspect of parenting stress. However, most parents have more than one child. This raises the possibility of varia- tions in parenting stress within the individual parent, whereby higher parenting stress is “child specific” within the family.

Even though most siblings are reared in the same home, neighborhood, and school environments, siblings are quite different from one another, and these differences in behavior translate into differences in parent-child relationships within families (Dunn & McGuire, 1994; Plomin & Daniels, 1987). Thus, the “quality” of parenting and the parent-child relationship is not determined by the characteristics of the parent or the child alone. How- ever, it is feasible to test whether certain aspects of sibling differences, for instance, sibling differences in behavior problems (Deater-Deckard. 1996) or in cognitive impairment (Baxter, Cummins, & Polak, 1995), are related to parenting stress and behavior, using correlational data. Whether these sibling differences are an important causal factor in producing differences in parenting stress within the parent requires longitudinal and, ideally, experimental designs.

If the “child domain” of parenting stress is truly child specific within f ad ie s , then parents of sibling children should report different levels of child domain parenting stress, and these different levels should correspond to levels of noxious behaviors in the sibling children, with the more “difficult” child being perceived as the source of greater amounts of parenting stress. In a recent sibling study (Deater-Deckard. 1996), parents’ perceptions of their sibling children’s externalizing behaviors (e.g., aggression, conduct problems) were correlated with parents’ feelings of negativity (measured by the DystLnc- tional Relationship scale on the Parenting Stress Index-Short Form; Abidin, 1990). More importantly, parental negativity covaried with siblings’ behavior problems wichinfamilies, such that the child who was perceived as being more difficult was also reported to generate greater feelings of negativity in the parent. In another recent study of cognitively impaired children and their

nonimpaired younger siblings (Baxter et al., 1995), parenting stress was linked to impairment. Thus, at least in those families where there are sibling children, parenting stress can not be thought of in the same way as adult psychopathology or personality. That is, there may be differences in parenting stress within each parent that are linked to sibling differences (and, more specifically, the parent’s perceptions of these sibling differences) within the family.

DIRECTIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH

Future research on parenting stress, its antecedents, and its consequences will hopefilly focus on describing those processes that link adult and child psychosocial adjustment. To this aim, four specific directions for future research are suggested. Ideally, all of this research will include longitudinal assessments and multivariate measurement.

Validity

The first issue to be addressed-and perhaps the most critical one-regards the measurement of parenting stress. Specifically, there is a need for research that focuses on deriving measures that discriminate pervasive emotional states and aspects of adult personality (eg., depressed mood, neuroticism, and emotional lability) from stress reactions to the demands of parenting. Although there is probably already adequate support for the face va l idq and external validity of commonly used measures of parenting stress, it is not yet clear whether these measures have dis- criminant and convergent validity (Deater-Deckard & Scarr, 1996). For instance, as reviewed here, depressive symptoms and parenting stress covary. However, it is possible that this covariation is a by-product of the way in which parenting stress is usually measured (self-report questionnaires). One approach to addressing this issue is to measure parenting stress within the same study in different ways, for instance, using both questionnaire and interview measures, as well as incorporating observational methods and approaching the construct of parenting stress from different sides, for example, asking parents to report both their general feelings about stress in the parenting role and their specific concerns about the day-to-day hassles that they face as parents.

Another potentially fruitful approach to establishing the validity of our measures of parenting stress is t o ‘ develop multivariate measurement approaches that dis-


criminate between stress reactions in different domains of life, for instance, reactions to stress arising from the demands of romantic and family relationships, from work, and from parenting. Although there are existing measures of these various domains of stress, they are rarely compared within the same study, and even then, the discrimi- nant and convergent validity of the measures is not usually tested. There is a need for research that measures stress in various domains, using various methods (e.g., interviews and questionnaires), so that these concerns about validity can be addressed. This issue is of paramount importance because we can not be entirely confident about the role of parenting stress in those social and cognitive processes that link adult and child adjustment until we are certain that our measures of parenting stress are not merely proxy measures of depressive symptoms or neurotic personality characteristics.

Incorporating Cognition

A second area of research involves the incorporation of multiple stages represented in a general theory ofthe stress reaction (Lazarus, 1993). We need more research that assesses parents’ appraisals of their children’s behaviors and needs, the parents’ coping mechanisms, and the parenting stress reaction, all within the same study and ideally using a prospective longitudinal design, so that the processes linking these aspects of the stress reaction can be described. In addition to the survey research that is con- ducted in this area, studies could also incorporate experimental designs where adults are exposed to infants or children for varying lengths of time in different contexts. This research could focus on specific attributes of children (e.g., infant crying, or comparing clinically disordered groups of children to matched control groups) or adults (parity, personality, and psychopathology).

One example of such a paradigm is provided by Ander- son et al. (1986). In this laboratory study, conduct- disordered boys were observed interacting with the mothers of nondisordered boys, and nondisordered boys were observed interacting with the mothers of conduct- disordered boys. In a replication of t h s design, a researcher could include measures of parenting stress, coping mechanisms, attributions, and psychosocial adjustment among the mothers, to explore the impact of exposure to a behaviorally difficult child on mothers of nondisordered children. Such studies would not only

inform us about the role of parent and child effects in the etiology of conduct problems, but would also inform us about the impact of exposure to noxious child behavior on adults’ parenting-related stress.

These and other experimental designs could be applied to any number of child or parent characteristics that are already known to be associated with parenting stress and behavior. An example is provided by Stasiewicz and Lis- man (1989). They measured alcohol consumption patterns and child abuse potential in a sample of nonparent undergraduate males, and then placed the men into low or high abuse potential groups. These two groups of men were then randomly assigned to hear either an infant cry or a smoke alarm. Blood pressure and subjective ratings of the noxiousness of the sound were measured afier each presentation, and the participants also completed a taste test involving alcohol. All of the men who were exposed to the infant cry (regardless oftheir abuse potentials) drank more alcohol, reported greater arousal, and rated the infant cry as being more aversive, compared to those exposed to the smoke alarm. It is feasible to apply these kinds of creative experimental designs to other samples of adults (parents and nonparents alike) and to incorporate other relevant stimuli such as aversive child behavior (e.g., hyperactivity).

Links Between Normal and Abnormal Levels of Parenting Stress A third important issue requiring further research is the exploration of the common and unique aspects of normal and more extreme parenting stress. Although domains of parenting are ofien thought of categorically (e.g., dys- functional, authoritarian), parenting stress and behaviors vary along continua in populations. An important ques- tion for future research is whether there are identifiable and meaningful extreme groups along the continuum of parenting stress, for instance, parents who do not experience any parenting stress, and those who are not able to function because of extremely high levels of parenting stress, and whether there are group differences in the structure and finctioning of parenting stress. One hypothesis is that parenting stress, and the processes linking the stress reaction to parenting behavior and adjustment and child adjustment, are similar across the full range of the parenting stress continuum. The alternate hypothesis is that the level of parenting stress may moderate the relations between parenting stress and parenting behavior,


child behavior, and family functioning, such that the links between parenting stress and parent and child adjustment are different for those parents in the normal range compared to those parents with more extreme levels of stress.

Although it is possible to compare findings from the ofien separate literatures on clinically referred and community-based samples of parents, it is very important that in the future researchers attempt to assess the full range of parenting stress and behavior within the same sampling framework so that more direct comparisons can be made between parenting stress in the normal and more extreme ranges. Having genetically sensitive designs would prove to be most useful here, given that such a design would allow for the comparison of the genetic and environmental etiology of individual differences in the full range ofparenting stress, and the comparison between individual differences and selected extreme group differences. Similar etiologies for parenting stress in the full range and the more extreme ranges would indicate that similar processes are probably operating across the entire continuum of parenting stress. In contrast, different findings for the unselected sample and extreme group would indicate that there may be important differences in the processes related to parenting stress in the normal and extreme ranges. Such research requires large samples using genetically sensitive designs, given that the selection of extreme groups results in small samples relative to the full unselected sample.

A related issue with respect to comparing categorical and continuous approaches is the inclusion of continuous measures of “gender” (e.g., sex-role orientation and flex- ibility, sex-role beliefs) in studies of sex differences in parenting stress. Although in general mothers and fathers report similar levels of parenting stress, it is possible that individual differences in masculinity, femininity, and sex- role attitudes covary with parenting stress. For example, although women generally report higher amounts of depressive symptoms than do men (Weissman & Klerman, 1977), masculinity has been linked to lower levels of depressive symptoms in both men and women (Waelde, Silvern, & Hodges, 1994). Another study ofpsychological &stress associated with infertility treatment found that sex-role identification was more strongly related to stress than was gender per se (Berg, Wilson, & Weingartner, 1991), with masculinity again showing a protective effect for both men and women. Inclusion of gender-related

measures wdl allow us to explore further those individual differences in parenting stress within sex groups and may lead to important discoveries that are masked by a categorical sex differences approach.

Phenotypes and Genotypes: Genetic Research Informs Us About Famlly Processes

The fourth and final suggestion is that all scientists should take seriously the inclusion of genetically sensitive designs in their research on parenting stress and child adjustment. We know that there are individual differences in parenting stress and that parenting stress covaries with individual differences in parent and child adjustment. Genetic variation may contribute significantly to these individual diff-erences in parenting stress and may also mediate the covariation of parenting stress and parent and child adjustment. In addition, by including genetic similarity as a variable in these studies, we will be able to answer important questions about the ways in which nongenetic environmental processes operate (Plomin, 1994).

There are several types of quantitative genetic designs that can be used to this end. All of these designs are based on the simple principle that estimates of genetic and nongenetic variance and covariance can be ascertained by comparing groups ofpaired individuals (adult o r child siblings, or parents and their children) who are known to

differ in their genetic similarity ( e g , twin and adoption designs). These designs are worthwhile because they provide answers to questions about phenotypic aspects ofparenting stress, as well as answers regarding the genetic and environmental etiology of individual differences in parenting stress and parent and child adjustment. Specifically, with genetically sensitive data, a researcher can not only test theories about the covariation of parenting stress and parental discipline, for example, but could also test whether there are both genetic and nongenetic factors contributing to the covariation of these two domains of parenting.

One very useful quantitative genetic design that has been underutilized is the adult twin parent design, where identical and fraternal adult twins who are also parents are compared on measures of parenting. This design has the added advantage of allowing comparisons of the twins’ children (e.g., children of identical twin mothers are cous- ins in terms of family structure but are genetic half- siblings), in addition to the direct genetic and environ-


mental variance estimates of the adult twins’ parenting measures. Kendler (1996) used this design to demonstrate that parental affect (i.e., warmth) was substantially herita- ble but that parental control (i.e., authoritarianism) was due to nongenetic, f a d y environment factors, a replication of findings fiom chdd twin and nontwin sibling studies (Deater-Deckard, 1996). Quantitative genetic designs like these that incorporate twin and adoption methodolo- gies using both child and adult siblings will be critically important to furthering our understanding of individual differences in parenting stress.

PARENTING I S STRESSFUL-AND OTHER CONCLUSIONS

To summarize, there are three main points to be made regarding the structure of parenting stress and its role in adult, child, and family functioning. Some of these points are more speculative than others, but all of them ullll hopehlly raise questions (preferably testable ones), with implications for clinicians and researchers.

First, parenting stress is clearly linked to adult hnction- ing, the quality of parent-child relationships, and child functioning. Parenting stress is a dstinct domain of stress and is separable through careful measurement fiom more general measures of stressful life events and circumstances, or specific measures of work-related stress and extant psychopathology. Parenting stress is not thought to be the “parent” version of adult neuroticism or depression but is instead a complex and distinct stress reaction to the demands of parenthood. However, although the parenting-related aspects of stress can be distinguished in measurement, the stress reaction to the demands of parenting may or may not be distinct from those stress reactions that are specific to other domains of life.

Second, parenting stress is ubiquitous, given that all parents-regardless of their own and their children’s attributes, their socioeconomic circumstances, and their support networks-experience parenting stress to some degree. The fact that parenting stress is a normal conse- quence of being a parent by no means trivializes it. Indeed, quite the opposite is true-there are individual differences in parenting stress, and variation in the normal as well as extreme ranges of this population distribution have been linked to adjustment in parents and children @eater-Deckard & Scam, 1996; Creasey & Reese, 1996). However, it is not clear that parenting stress in the normal range is similar to or different fiom parenting stress in the

extreme high range. Consideration of the etiology of normal variants and more extreme, clinically relevant variants ofparenting stress may provide further insight into the etiology of parenting stress and its role in adult adjustment and family functioning. Quantitative genetic methods will prove to be particularly useful in exploring the links between normal and extreme levels ofparenting stress and parent functioning (Deater-Deckard, Reiss, Hethering- ton, & Plomin, 1997), whereby genetic and environmental factors that are either common or unique to normal and extreme variation can be identified.

Finally, parenting stress varies within families in important and discernible ways. Couples may vary in the degree to which the mother and father differ in levels of parenting stress. Furthermore, the child domain of parenting stress may be child specific within families, such that sibling differences in adjustment may be intimately linked to intra-individual variation in parenting stress. This covariation between parenting stress and sibling adjustment, as well as parenting stress and adult adjustment, may be genetically mediated such that the observed correlations between parenting stress, parental behavior, and child adjustment may be explained, in part, by shared genetic and environmental variation. More generally, the exploration of between-family, within-family, and within- individual sources of variation will provide useful answers to remaining questions about the nature ofparenting stress and the processes that link parenting stress to parents’ and children’s health and happiness.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I thank Judy DUM. Alison Pike, Thalia Eley, Stephen A. Petrill, and Keirsten Deater-Deckard, who provided valuable feedback on earlier drafts of the manuscript. I also owe thanks to Anna Deater-Deckard, who in her five young months has already taught me valuable lessons about the joys and stresses of parenting.

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