Maternal stress and negative parenting: the mediating role of stress reactivity

Abstract

Stress is an established predictive factor in the types of parenting behaviours used and parent-child relationships. While research suggests that not all parents under stressful situations would engage similarly in negative parenting practices due to individual differences in responses to stressors, few studies have examined the mechanism underlying the association between perceived stress and the use of negative parenting practices. This study thus aimed to bridge this research gap by examining the mediating role of perceived stress reactivity. 335 mothers from Singapore’s largest birth cohort study provided their responses on the Perceived Stress Scale when their child was aged 7, Perceived Stress Reactivity Scale when their child was aged 10, and the negative parenting dimensions on the Parenting Styles and Dimensions Questionnaire half a year later. A mediation analysis using 5000-bootstrap resamples was conducted with perceived stress reactivity as the mediator. Perceived stress was directly associated with mothers’ use of verbal hostility (B = 0.02, SE = 0.01, p = .017), physical coercion (B = 0.02, SE = 0.01, p = .008), and non-reasoning (B = 0.01, SE = 0.01, p = .035). Further, a positive indirect effect of perceived stress on verbal hostility through perceived stress reactivity was found (B = 0.01, SE = 0.004, p =.004). However, no significant indirect effects were observed for physical coercion and non-reasoning. Thus, findings suggest that greater daily stress was related to greater use of negative parenting practices among mothers. This study revealed that mothers’ stress reactivity is an underlying mechanism unique to the relationship between daily stressors and mothers’ use of verbal hostility.