Association between Mothers' Concern about Child Rearing and Their Parenting Stress

Many studies have indicated that parenting stress is an important factor causing child abuse. The purpose of the present study was to reveal the association between mothers' concern about child rearing and the stress they suffer from in the practice. The study subjects were 222 mothers with children of two kindergartens aged 3-6 years, and the study was conducted from October to November 2004. We analyzed the responses from 152 mothers, who were aged from 23 to 43 years with the mean (standard deviation) of 33.9 (4.0) years. The mothers were asked in a self-administered questionnaire their attributes, and whether they suffer from child-rearing stress. Those who responded "yes" were asked to write about their anxieties and worries in child rearing freely in the specified space of the questionnaire. Furthermore, the Japanese version of the Parenting Stress Index (PSI) was used to investigate parenting stress. Approximately half of the valid responses (75/152) provided descriptions of worries/anxieties regarding child rearing, and we classified their description using KJ method. The PSI score was significantly higher in those who wrote "Difficult to control myself" than in those who did not (p=0.02) and was significantly higher in those who wrote "Don't feel confident with child rearing" than in those who did not (p=0.03). In the present study, among 75 mothers who wrote about worries and anxieties in child rearing, approximately half of them wrote about worries and anxieties regarding parents themselves, which were significantly associated with some of the PSI subscales. Notably, the mothers whose writings were classified as "Don't feel confident with child rearing" felt depressed, had insufficient social support, and had low self-evaluation for their parental capability. In conclusion, the present study suggested the importance of screening based on surveys about depression, social support and stress management