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ing stress and child adjustment. In addition, three quertions for future research regarding wlthin-family and
within-indhridual variation in parenting stress are
raised: (a) Is parenting stress genetiully influenced? (b)
Do mothers and fathers show similar or different levels
Researchen have known for some time that adult psychosocial fbnctioning is intimately linked to individual
differences in stresshl life experiences and circumstances.
Having more stressful life events has been shown to be
correlated with psychosocial adjustment for children and
adults (Brown & Harris, 1989; Goodyer, 1990). Life stress
is probably role specific-that is, stress in the parenting
role is qualitatively distinct fiom stress in other distinct
domains (see Creasey & Reese, 1996). Although there is
likely to be some spillover across these domains (e.g.,
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Applying a general theory of psychological or physiological stress is useful for understanding the complex processes
that link the demands of parenting, stress in the parenting
role, and parenting behavior. The stress process includes
four components: (a) an external, causal went or agent; (b)
a cognitive appraisal of this event or agent to determine
whether it is noxious or not; (c) coping mechanisms to
reduce the noxiousness of this event or agent; and (d) consequential effects on the mind and body, or the stress reaction (Lazarus, 1993).
The Child and Parenting Role as Causal Agents
The resulting stress reaction is readily observed as the parents behavior and affect. Most studes of parenting stress
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An implicit assumption of most of the research on parenting and child development is that parenting behavior is a
proximal mediator of more distal stressors, such as social
and economic disadvantage (Dodge et al., 1994) and
parental conflict (Emery, 1982).
Despite the assumption that parenting behavior mediates the relation between parenting stress and child adjustment, there has been surprisingly little research that has
explicitly tested this mediation hypothesis. One large
study of dual-earner couples with young children showed
support for the hypothesis (Deater-Deckard & Scarr,
1996), with higher amounts ofparenting stress being correlated with more authoritarian parental mscipline behavior, which was in turn correlated with more behavior
problems among children. Another recent study also
found evidence for this hypothesis (Conger et al., 1995),
although the measure of parenting stress in this study was
based on life events and not a measure of psychological
distress in the parenting role.
It seems likely that this hypothesis is sound given the
evidence for the mediating role of parenting behavior in
research on at risk groups of parents. For example, the
impact of depression in mothers on childrens adjustment
has been shown to be mediated, in part, through maternal
behavior, with depressed mothers showing less responsive
and involved parenting behavior (Downey & Coyne,
1990). However, this third hypothesis-that
parental
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health or behavioral problems. For example, among parents of children with disabilities, parenting stress is higher
among those parents who feel stigmatized by the childs
disability (Baxter, 1989).
Thus, child attributes contribute to parenting stress in
very important ways. Because stress in the parenting role
is associated with the quality of the parent-child relationship, understanding those child-based factors that contribute to higher amounts of stress for the parent is crucial to
elucidating the processes linking parent and child behavior. Although most of the research on family socialization
has emphasized the effects ofparenting behavior and affect
on children, it is of paramount importance to address the
inherent bidirectionality of parent-child interactions; parent and child behaviors can be viewed as actions as well
as reactions (Bell & Chapman, 1986; Sameroff, 1975).
There is empirical evidence for child effects on parental
behavior (see Bell & Harper, 1977; Maccoby & Martin,
1983). Researchers have found that effective parents are
sensitive to their childrens responses to earlier parental
behavior. An example of this is the establishment of reciprocal dyadic interaction between a mother and her newborn (Cohn & Tronick, 1988), whereby well-functioning
mother-infant dyads are characterized by maternal
responsiveness to cues from the infant, and vice versa
(Lester, Hoffman, & Brazelton, 1985). In laboratory
research, childrens dependence and activity levels have
been shown to predict more directive parental behavior,
and a childs attentiveness to an adult has been linked to
the adults positive attention toward that child (Bell &
Chapman, 1986). Research on oppositional behavior
among conduct-disordered boys has demonstrated that
these children may be driving the negative interactions
with their parents (Anderson, Lytton, & Romney, 1986).
There is also evidence that parents react differently to
the behavior of boys and girls (Lytton & Romney, 1991;
Maccoby & Martin, 1983).
These child effects may become more pronounced
over time, because children develop greater self-control
and awareness as they mature cognitively and emotionally
(Maccoby, 1984). Maccoby notes that the parent-child
dyad enters a period of co-regulation from early childhood to puberty, when child autonomy increases dramatically. As children grow older, parents use less physical
punishment and more reasoning and contractual discipline, largely in response to the childrens changing competencies (Kuczynski, Kochanska, Radke-Yarrow, &
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nonimpaired younger siblings (Baxter et al., 1995), parenting stress was linked to impairment. Thus, at least in
those families where there are sibling children, parenting
stress can not be thought of in the same way as adult
psychopathology or personality. That is, there may be
differences in parenting stress within each parent that are
linked to sibling differences (and, more specifically, the
parents perceptions of these sibling differences) within
the family.
D I R E C T I O N S FOR FUTURE RESEARCH
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OTHER
extreme high range. Consideration of the etiology of normal variants and more extreme, clinically relevant variants
ofparenting stress may provide further insight into the etiology of parenting stress and its role in adult adjustment
and family functioning. Quantitative genetic methods will
prove to be particularly useful in exploring the links
between normal and extreme levels ofparenting stress and
parent functioning (Deater-Deckard, Reiss, Hetherington, & Plomin, 1997), whereby genetic and environmental factors that are either common or unique to normal
and extreme variation can be identified.
Finally, parenting stress varies within families in important and discernible ways. Couples may vary in the degree
to which the mother and father differ in levels of parenting stress. Furthermore, the child domain of parenting
stress may be child specific within families, such that sibling differences in adjustment may be intimately linked to
intra-individual variation in parenting stress. This covariation between parenting stress and sibling adjustment, as
well as parenting stress and adult adjustment, may be
genetically mediated such that the observed correlations
between parenting stress, parental behavior, and child
adjustment may be explained, in part, by shared genetic
and environmental variation. More generally, the exploration of between-family, within-family, and withinindividual sources of variation will provide useful answers
to remaining questions about the nature ofparenting stress
and the processes that link parenting stress to parents and
childrens health and happiness.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
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