PARENTING STRESS AND CHILD ADJUSTMENT - SOME OLD HYPOTHESES AND NEW QUESTIONS

Individual differences in parenting stress, experienced by most parent s as those aversive feelings that are associated with the demands of t he parenting role, have been shown to be an important aspect of parent , child, and family functioning. A definition of parenting stress is p rovided, along with its application to more general stress models. Thr ee implicit hypotheses in much of the past research on parenting stres s and behavior are evaluated: (a) parenting stress is causally related to poor parenting, (b) poor parenting is causally related to problems in child adjustment, and (c) parenting behavior mediates the associat ions between parenting stress and child adjustment. In addition, three questions for future research regarding within-family and within-indi vidual variation in parenting stress are raised: (a) Is parenting stre ss genetically influenced? (b) Do mothers and fathers show similar or different levels of parenting stress? (c) Is parenting stress ''child specific'' within families?.