The Relationship Between Parenting Stress, Harsh Discipline And Preschoolers’ Behaviour Problems

Parenting stress and parental harsh discipline are two important factors in determiningchildren’s behaviour problems. Especially when disciplining preschool children, parents oftenexperience high levels of parenting stress, for example intensity and anxiety. Parents whoreported high parenting stress would be more likely to use harsh discipline toward theirchildren. However, most research that focused on parenting stress and parental harshdiscipline has been conducted in Western settings and very little is known about thecharacteristics of them and the relations between parenting stress, harsh discipline andchildren adjustment among Chinese societies. Accordingly, the present study explored thecharacteristics of parenting stress and harsh discipline for fathers and mothers separately inChinese societies. Furthermore, based on family systems theory, we examined whetherparental harsh discipline mediates the relationship between parenting stress and preschoolchildren’s behaviour problems.The present study used a longitudinal design with a sample of 642 preschool children’sfathers and mothers who were recruited from two kindergartens in Jinan, Shandong Province.Both fathers and mothers were assessed at two points in time. Self-reported questionnaireswere administered to collect the data, including Parenting Stress Index–Short Form (PSI/SF),Parent-Child Conflict Tactics Scale (CTSPC) and Child Behavior Check List (CBCL).Fathers and mothers were asked to complete the questionnaires independently. The mainconclusions of the study were as follows:1. The parents showed significantly higher scores on parenting stress scale and ondysfunctional interaction subscale with boys than with girls. Compared to fathers, mothersreported higher scores on parenting stress scale. Additionally, there was a tendency that thelower the SES was, the higher parenting stress the parents experienced.2. Parental harsh discipline is prevalent in Mainland China. About 82.71% of fathers and89.56% of mothers reported at least one incident of psychological aggression in the previousyear. Fathers and mothers who used psychological aggression for one or more times reporteda mean of 12.82 and 14.69 instances respectively in the past year. For corporal punishment,64.64% of fathers and 73.21% of mothers reported having used corporal punishment toward their children in the previous year, and the average frequency was 6.69 times for fathers and8.00 times for mothers.3. Parents perpetrated significantly or marginally significantly higher rates of corporalpunishment on boys than on girls. As compared to fathers, mothers reported higher rates andmore frequent use of psychological aggression and corporal punishment on their children.Furthermore, significant SES differences in parental harsh discipline were observed. Theprevalence and frequency of maternal psychological aggression and corporal punishmentdeclined with the SES, but there were no significant SES differences for paternal harshdiscipline.4. There was positively significant correlations among parenting stress, parental harshdiscipline(including psychological aggression and corporal punishment), and children’sbehaviour problems(including internalizing and externalizing behaviour problems). Thecorrelations between parenting stress and children’s behaviour problems for mothers arestronger than for fathers. Paternal psychological aggression was significantly and positivelyrelated to children’s aggression, delinquency and anxiety/depression, while for mothers,psychological aggression was significantly positively related to children’s aggression andanxiety/depression. Parental corporal punishment merely significantly related to children’saggression .5. Structural equation modeling analyses revealed that fathers’ parenting stress couldsignificantly predict their harsh discipline, but couldn’t predict children’s behaviour problems.While Mothers’ parenting stress has significant effects on preschool childrens’ internalizingand externalizing behaviours, and maternal harsh discipline has partly mediating effects onthe relationship between mothers’ parenting stress and childrens’ internalizing andexternalizing behaviour problems.