The influence of distress on mothers' and fathers' reports of childhood emotional and behavioral problems

This study examined the effect of parental distress on mothers' and fathers ' reports of children's emotional and behavioral problems. The subjects wer e the parents of 696 children aged 10 to 11 or 14 to 15 years living in two -parent families in the community. The study utilized an extended version o f the model previously employed by Fergusson, Lynskey, and Horwood (1993) t o examine the impact of maternal depression on mothers' reports of children 's behavior. In the present study, the extended model was used to assess th e impact of distress on reports of childhood externalizing and internalizin g problems obtained from both mothers and fathers. The results suggested th at distress had little influence on mothers' or fathers' reports of childho od behavior problems. It is concluded that in community studies the size of any bias in mothers' and fathers' reports of childhood behavior problems d ue to parental distress is likely to be very small and of little clinical s ignificance.