Maternal Personality, Stress, and Parenting Behaviors

The current study uses a sample of 35 mother-child dyads to examine the degree to which parenting stress and personality style correlate with parenting behaviors and features of dyadic interaction. Parenting stress was measured using the Parenting Stress Index (Abidin, 1995) and personality was assessed using the NEO Five Factor Inventory-3 (McCrae & Costa, 2010). Mother-child interactions were coded using the Parent-Child Early Relational Assessment (Clark, 1985). Interactions between parenting stress, personality style, and parenting behaviors were explored as well. Extraversion was positively correlated with enthusiasm/joyfulness/mutual enjoyment, dyadic reciprocity, and overall adaptive parenting style. Parenting stress was negatively correlated with enthusiasm/joyfulness/mutual enjoyment and overall adaptive parenting style. Extraversion and conscientiousness were negatively correlated with parenting stress. The moderator effect of personality on the relationship between parenting stress and parenting behaviors was less significant than expected. However, neuroticism was found to moderate the relationship between stress and angry/hostile tone of voice used by the mothers. Implications of this study and areas of suggested further research are discussed