The Associations of Parenting Stress, Mindful Parenting and Parent-Child Relationship: An Actor-Partner Interdependence Model

Li Yan; Ju Jiawen; Liang Lichan; Bian Yufang

doi:10.16719/j.cnki.1671-6981.20230620

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Journal of Psychological Science ›› 2023, Vol. 46 ›› Issue (6) : 1432-1439. DOI: 10.16719/j.cnki.1671-6981.20230620

Social，Personality & Organizational Psychology

The Associations of Parenting Stress, Mindful Parenting and Parent-Child Relationship: An Actor-Partner Interdependence Model

Li Yan¹, Ju Jiawen¹, Liang Lichan^1,2,3, Bian Yufang^1,2,3

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Abstract

Purpose: Parenting stress, a type of role-related stress, is perceived by parents when they experience child-rearing issues. Parenting stress causes parents to give up their roles or to become passive, which often prevents them from shaping an intimate parent-child relationship. In that process, mindful parenting, referring to a set of skills or practices in parenting, may become a vital factor and play a mediating role in it. According to the Family System Theory, fathers and mothers are inherently dependent in interdependent relationships. Therefore, parents’ characteristics cannot solely explain their parenting behavior, and researchers should also consider their partners’ influence. However, there is limited research that treats parents as an integral unit in data analysis or investigates such questions. As a result, this study aims to examine how parenting stress experienced by mothers and fathers influences their own (actor effects) and the partner’s (partner effects) parent-child relationship. Furthermore, we test the mediating role of mindful parenting and the gender differences in both actor effects and partner effects.

Methods: Written consent forms were given to school administrators, students, and parents to obtain their consent. Students brought questionnaires for parents and then brought them back to school after parents filled them respectively. A total of 700 families rated their parenting stress, mindful parenting at T1, while 560 families rated parent-child relationship at T2, and FIML was used to deal with missing data. The final example included 700 families, consisting of parents of 336 boys and 363 girls. At T1, on average, children were 14.26 years old (SD = .45 years old). Percentages of the maternal and paternal educational level were 73.3% and 71.0% for junior college and above. The study first used SPSS 25.0 to analyze general descriptive statistics and pairwise correlations (Pearson's r) and then used MPLUS 8.3 to build the Actor Partner Interdependent Model(APIM), which was useful to analyze non-independent data.

Results: (1) Parenting stress had both negative actor and partner effects on the parent-child relationship. It showed that parents with higher parenting stress at the first measurement occasion perceived worse parent-child relationship 1 year later, and so do their partners’. (2) The mediating actor effects showed that mindful parenting played a mediating role in their owned parenting stress and parent-child relationships. Specifically, parenting stress negatively predicted mindful parenting, and mindful parenting positively predicted the parent-child relationship. (3) Regarding mediating partner effects, maternal parenting stress predicted the father-child relationship only through paternal mindful parenting, while paternal parenting stress predicted the mother-child relationship only through maternal mindful parenting. (4) The statistical tests indicated that there were no gender differences between fathers and mothers in both actor effects and partner effects.

Conclusions: This study improves our understanding of the underlying mechanism involved in the family by showing the relationship between parenting stress and parent-child relationship. Parenting stress affects both parents themselves and their partner's mindful parenting and the parent-child relationship. The findings demonstrate the significance of including both fathers and mothers in one study to enhance our understanding of the mutual influence among family members. It also provides not only a basis for parent-child relationship promotion but also targeted intervention programs for families.

Key words

parenting stress / parent-child relationship / mindful parenting / actor-partner interdependence mediation model

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Li Yan, Ju Jiawen, Liang Lichan, Bian Yufang. The Associations of Parenting Stress, Mindful Parenting and Parent-Child Relationship: An Actor-Partner Interdependence Model[J]. Journal of Psychological Science. 2023, 46(6): 1432-1439 https://doi.org/10.16719/j.cnki.1671-6981.20230620

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