A study on regulating factors of the influence of Children’s negative emotions on mothers' parenting stress: A study of China's post-80s generation

Abstract

The study is aimed at identifying factors that regulate the influence of negative emotions of the child on the stress of working mothers. This problem is significant for most developing countries and especially for China in connection with the change in demographic dynamics and psychology of generations after the 80 s. The study involved 268 mothers from the city of Liaocheng in Shandong province of China, who have one child under 5 years of age. For their survey, three scales were used: Emotionality, Activity, Sociability (EAS) (for children), Parenting Sense of Competence (PSOC) and Parental stress developed by Chinese experts. Comparison of the results of the scales and checking for significant differences using the Student's t-test between individual scales for the same participant made it possible to identify relationships between the child's emotional type of temperament and the level of stress, as well as between self-efficacy and mothers' satisfaction in PSOC and the level parental stress. The multivariate regression analysis model generally supported the results obtained. Thus, there are regulatory factors that manifest themselves in the form of dependencies between certain types of behavior in young children, parental stress, and parents' assessment of their satisfaction and self-efficacy. This assessment is especially important for working mothers, since their assessment may differ significantly from other groups of parents. The results of this study can be practically applied in the practice of family therapy, social work, assistance to working mothers and in the work of social services.