The longitudinal mediating influence of parental stress on children

Background: The existing literature suggests a bidirectional, transactional relationship between parents’ stress and children’s internalising issues. Parents’ stress can adversely impact parenting styles and contribute to children’s internalising problems, while children’s internalising behaviours can also increase parenting stress over time. However, the internal mechanisms and mediators underlying this cross-lagged effect have not been fully explored. One potentially important factor is parents’ distressed reaction to children’s negative emotions, which may play a key role in the bidirectional association between parental stress and child internalising issues. Further research is needed to elucidate these transactional processes; the present study will focus on exploring the mediating effect of this relationship.

Methods: Data were obtained from the Child and Parent Emotion Study (CAPES), a longitudinal study involving parents with children aged 0-10 (Westrupp et al., 2020). Participants were recruited online through snowball sampling across Australia, New Zealand, the UK, Northern Ireland, the USA, and Canada. Data were collected in four waves, each 12 months apart, using self-reported surveys from parents. The measures includedthe following. Depression Anxiety Stress Scales – Stress subscale (DASS): 7 items rated on a four-point Likert scale. Coping with Children’s Negative Emotions Scale (CCNES): A seven-point scale, with the distressed reaction sub-scale computed as a mean score serving as a mediator. Very Short Child Behaviour Questionnaire – Negative Affect (VS-CBQ): 12 items rated on a seven-point Likert scale. Only data from Wave 1 and Wave 2 were utilized for analysis.

Findings: The distressed reaction sub-scale of CCNES mediated the relationship between parental stress (DASS) and children’s negative affect (VS-CBQ), controlling for autoregressive effects. The results indicate that parents’ distressed emotions regarding their child’s negative feelings at Time 1 significantly mediate the relationship between parental stress at Time 1 and children’s internalised issues at Time 2. The indirect effect is notable, with a coefficient of 0.048 (p less than 0.001). Specifically, the path coefficients are as follows: parental stress to distressed reactions (0.307, p less than 0.001), distressed reactions to internalised issues (0.155, p less than 0.001), and parental stress directly to internalised issues (0.231, p less than 0.001). However, this mediating effect does not hold in the subsequent wave of data collection. The path from parents’ distressed emotions to children’s internalised issues becomes insignificant, while the other two paths remain significant. Importantly, autoregressive effects are substantial, with parental stress showing a coefficient of 0.565 (p less than 0.001) and children’s internalised issues at 0.640 (p less than 0.001).

Implications: The findings underscore the importance of addressing parents’ coping mechanisms in response to their children’s negative emotions, particularly in managing distressed reactions. Effective coping strategies can mitigate the adverse effects of parental stress on children’s mental health. The observed diminishing mediating effect over time, coupled with high autoregressive effects, suggests that both parental stress and children’s internalised issues are stable and can become self-reinforcing, leading to persistent challenges for families. These insights highlight the critical need for timely and continuous support systems to disrupt entrenched behaviour patterns and emotional responses. By providing early interventions, we can help families break these cycles and promote healthier emotional development in children, ultimately preventing the escalation of internalising issues.