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1 OCTOBER 2008
NO 1354
Parenthood and stress
Stress factors associated with parenthood and functioning as a father comprise aspects such as the child's mood, demandingness and acceptability, the father's sense of competence in his role, his affection to the child, the restrictiveness of the parent role, father's isolation, health and depressive mood.
The term "demandingness" here refers to situations where the father feels that the child is imposing possibly excessive demands on him, as manifested in incessant crying, physical clinging, "pestering" and various minor problems of behaviour (Abidin, 1995; Beebe, Casey and Pinto-Martin, 1993). Child's mood here means emotional function as evinced in satisfaction or dissatisfaction, low spirits, repeated crying and happiness or despondency (Abidin, 1995). Acceptability comprises the correspondence of the child's physical, mental and emotional qualities with the parents' expectations (Abidin, 1995). Previous studies have shown the child's characteristics to affect the father's sense of stress (Abidin, 1995; McBride, Schoppe and Rane, 2002); here particularly the propensity of girls to manifest negative feelings (McBride et al., 2002). This has been surmised to derive from the fact that fathers feel freer and more natural in their dealings with their male offspring, the child's qualities thus exerting a more marked effect on their sense of stress in the case of daughters (McBride et al., 2002).
The skills involved in functioning as a father are drawn from a variety of sub-areas. In the present context what is conceived is mainly the father's estimate of the adequacy of his skills and their appropriateness to child upbringing and care, together with criticism of the father in this capacity (Abidin, 1995). According to Fagan (2000) the shared time of a preschool boy and his father is curtailed as daily problems and conflicts accrue. Fathers report some 2.4 conflict situations a day connected with work, family or health (Fagan, 2000). Such situations arise more regularly when the father is in a bad mood (Almeida, Wethington and McDonald, 2001). Experience of parenthood stress is closely associated with a paucity of social relations and support networks, and situations in which fathers feel concourse with their children to exert a negative effect in important spheres of their lives; here fathers may experience parenthood as an element apart from their own identity and as a factor restrictive of their freedom (Abidin, 1995). Although nursing science conceives of health as a broad spectrum of well-being, the term is here used to refer to freedom from disease and the father's general sense of mental and physical well-being (Abidin, 1995). Primarily, the mood that causes stress is mainly the father's sense of guilt, unhappiness and dissatisfaction with his life (Abidin, 1995).
As regards stress associated with functioning as a father of a preschool child and its connection with father-child engagement and the extent of the father's availability, research data are scant. According to Garrison and Blalock (1997), those who have become fathers later in life experience less stress associated with parenthood compared with men attaining to fatherhood at the typical stage in life. Particularly, stress connected to marital relations is less marked compared with that in the normally distributed age categories (Garrison and Blalock, 1997). In a number of crosssectional studies it has proved difficult to demonstrate a causal relationship between parenthood stress and the extent of father-child engagement and father's availability (Esdaile and Greenwood, 2003; Fagan, 2000, McBride et al., 2002). Since fathers frequently report greater parent-linked stress in consequence of a greater commitment to their children, it remains difficult to conclude unambiguously whether this stress influences their dealings with their children or vice versa (cf. Fagan, 2000). In constructing the measure model for the present study, however it was felt justifiable on the basis of the literature to hitherto assume the father's experienced stress to be an explaining factor in father-child engagement (McBride et al., 2002).
The increasing interest focused in recent
years on fathers and fatherhood has raised questions as to why some
fathers are more committed than others, derive greater pleasure from
interplay with their children and are both indirectly and directly more
readily available to the children and at their disposal. In conceptual
terms, such engagement is defined as to embrace any joint and
interactive undertakings of the father and preschool child in which the
father's emotions, his attitude to his child and their joint activities,
together with the daily conflict situations these may entail, are
closely associated. (Almeida et al., 2001; Baildam et al., 2000; Fagan,
2000; Yeung, Sandberg, Davis-Kean and Hofferth, 2001). Although joint
activities and availability have been conceptually operationalized in a
number of ways in earlier studies (for example, Cabrera, Tamis-LeMonda,
Bradley, Hofferth and Lamb, 2000; Hawkins and Dollahite, 1997), it has
nonetheless been acknowledged that a better understanding of father
commitment calls preferably for a simultaneous quantitative and
qualitative assessment of engagement and availability.
NINA HALME,
MARJA-TERTTU TARKKA, TAPIO NUMMI AND PAIVI ASTEDT-KURKI
Halme, N.; Tarkka, M.T.; Nummi, T. and Astedt-Kurki,
P. (2006). The effect of parenting stress on father's availability and
engagement. Child Care in Practice, 12, 1. pp. 14-16.
REFERENCES
Abidin, R. R. (1995). Parenting stress index. Professional manual (3rd ed.). Odessa, FL. Psychological Assessment Resource, Inc.
Almeida, D. M., Wethington, E. and McDonald, D. A. (2001). Daily variation in parental engagement and negative mood: Implications for emotionally supportive and conflictual interactions. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 63. pp. 417-430.
Baildam, E. M., Hillier, V F., Menon, S., Bannister, R. P., Bamford, E N., Moore, W. M. O.and Ward, B. S. (2000). Attention to infants in the first year. Child: Care, Health, and Development, 26. pp. 199-216.
Beebe, S. A., Casey, R.and Pinto-Martin, J. (1993). Association of reported infant crying and maternal parenting stress. Clinical Pediatrics, 32. pp. 15-19.
Cabrera, N. J., Tamis-LeMonda, C. S., Bradley, R. H., Hofferth, S. and Lamb, M. E. (2000). Fatherhood in the 21st century. Child Development, 71. pp.127-136.
Esdaile, S. A. and Greenwood, K. M. (2003). A comparison of mothers' and fathers' experience of parenting stress and attributions for parent-child interaction outcomes. Occupational Therapy International, 10. pp. 115-127.
Fagan, J. (2000). Head start fathers' daily hassles and involvement with their children. Journal of Family Issues, 21. pp. 329-346.
Garrison, B. M. E. and Blalock, L. B. (1997). Delayed parenthood: An exploratory study of family functioning. Family Relations, 46. pp. 281-291.
Hawkins, A. J. and Dollahite, D. C. (1997). Generative fathering: beyond deficit perspectives. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
McBride, B. A., Schoppe, S. J. and Rane, T. R. (2002). Child characteristics, parenting stress, and parental involvement: Fathers versus mothers. Journal of Marriage and Family, 64. pp. 998-1011.
Yeung, W. J., Sandberg, J. E, Davis-Kean, P. E. and
Hofferth, S. L. (2001). Children's time with fathers in intact families.
Journal of Marriage and Family, 63. pp. 136-155.
