Direct and Indirect Influences of Parenting Stress on Children's Self-Regulation

Introduction: Some parents experience elevated stress in the parenting role, reporting high levels of daily hassles, and disillusionment about parenting demands. Exposure to stressed parents, in turn, may adversely affect the development of child self-regulation skills. However, the nature of these developmental links is not well understood. If stressed parents model emotional outbursts in ways that evoke dysregulated reactions from their children, the link may be direct. On the other hand, parenting stress may also increase parental reliance on negative and directive control strategies, which may restrict opportunities to practice and develop self-regulatory skills. Thus, parental stress may also affect child self-regulation indirectly, mediated by negative and controlling parenting behaviors. In addition, these effects may transact over time. Few studies have tested these associations longitudinally, exploring bi-directional influences.

Methods: Children and caregivers participated during the pre-kindergarten and kindergarten years. Participants included two cohorts (N=210, mean age time 1=4.8) recruited from 26 Head Start classrooms in 3 counties in Pennsylvania. Parent stress was assessed using parent ratings of hassles, stress, and parent strategies. Parent negative control was assessed using direct observations of parent-child interactions. Two dimensions of child self-regulation (emotion regulation and attention control) were assessed using teacher ratings.

Results: Two cross-lagged longitudinal path analyses examined bi-directional effects between parent stress and negative parental control, with child emotion regulation and attention control as the two outcomes. In the emotion regulation model, parent stress in pre-kindergarten significantly predicted parent use of negative control in kindergarten with a standardized path coefficient of .40 (p=.04). In addition, parent negative control in kindergarten significantly predicted child emotion regulation in kindergarten with a standardized path coefficient of -.50 (p=.03). In the attention control model, parent stress in pre-kindergarten significantly predicted parent use of negative control in kindergarten with a standardized path coefficient of .34 (p=.05). In addition, parent negative control in kindergarten significantly predicted children’s attention control with a standardized path coefficient of -.69 (p=.01).

Conclusions: These findings suggest that parent stress may affect the development of children’s self-regulation primarily through an indirect influence pathway, where it increases parental reliance on negative control over time. In turn, parental use of negative control appears linked directly with lower levels of child self-regulation. Implications for early intervention are discussed.