Parenting stress and child adjustment: Some old hypotheses and new questions

Individual differences in parenting stress, experienced by most parents as those aversive feelings that are associated with the demands of the parenting role, have been shown to be an important aspect of parent, child, and family functioning. A definition of parenting stress is provided, along with its application to more general stress models. Three implicit hypotheses in much of the past research on parenting stress and behavior are evaluated: (a) parenting stress is causally related to poor parenting, (b) poor parenting is causally related to problems in child adjustment, and (c) parenting behavior mediates the associations between parenting stress and child adjustment. In addition, three questions for future research regarding within-family and within-individual variation in parenting stress are raised: (a) Is parenting stress genetically influenced? (b) Do mothers and fathers show similar or different levels of parenting stress? (c) Is parenting stress "child specific" within families?.