Examining the Role of Parent Stress in Adolescent Emotional Development and Parent-Focused Interventions

Kelsey Mauro

Advisor: Tara Chaplin, PhD, Department of Psychology

Committee Members: Jerome Short, Christianne Esposito-Smythers

Online Location, Online
April 05, 2024, 01:00 PM to 03:00 PM

Abstract:

Parenting is often associated with compounding stressors that include child rearing, relationship satisfaction, financial burdens, and everyday tasks that might prove overwhelming. The COVID-19 pandemic has also introduced new stressors for parents, increasing the relevance of understanding the impact of parent stress. Such stressors might accumulate to create a persistent feeling of distress among parents that influences youth’s emotion regulation (ER) development, as well as parent participation in treatments designed to intervene on youth emotional problems and maladaptive parenting approaches. Parent stress may be particularly elevated among parents of early adolescents, as this transitional period includes new desires for adolescent autonomy and changes in parent-child relationship dynamics. Thus, Study 1 of this dissertation included 240 mothers and their 11–14-year-old adolescents, and examined the relationship between parent perceived stress and adolescent ER during early adolescence, as well as parent perceived stress during early adolescence and longitudinal development of adolescent ER from early to middle adolescence. Further, this study investigated the possible role of adolescent sex and race/ethnicity in the relationship between parent perceived stress and adolescent ER. Results showed that greater maternal perceived stress in early adolescence was associated with greater adolescent ER difficulties in early adolescence, but maternal perceived stress did not predict longitudinal changes in adolescent ER. There was not evidence that adolescent sex or race/ethnicity interacted with parent perceived stress in predicting adolescent ER. 

Study 2 examined another avenue by which parent stress may impact youth development, particularly the effect of parent stress on participation in and outcomes of Parent Training (PT), a common intervention approach that works with parents to improve youth emotional and behavioral problems. Study 2 was a comprehensive literature review and conceptual model that proposes a possible connection between parent stress and engagement in and efficacy of PT, particularly highlighting the importance of the type of parent stress that is considered. The conceptual model proposed suggests that while most forms of parent stress may be detrimental to engagement in and efficacy of PT, parent stress that is specifically related to child behavior problems might have motivating properties and might improve parental engagement in PT and possibly improve effects of PT on child outcomes. Recommendations for clinical practice and future research are also discussed.