Parental and Marital Role Stress During the School Entry Transition

Abstract

Three issues related to the oldest child's school entry transition were addressed. Retrospective reports of parents' initial response to their oldest child's school entry were contrasted with their responses three months later, revealing a significant decline in parental and marital role stress for mothers and a significant decline in parental role stress for fathers. Mothers reported significantly more parental and marital role stress at school entry than fathers. A second analysis, addressing relationships between demographic variables and parents' initial response to their child's school entry, identified the child's previous experience in pre-school as significantly related to stress for both parents, and level of education and being married previously as significantly related to fathers' stress. The final issue, predicting changes in parents' stress following a three-month period of adjustment, revealed that selected demographic and communication variables were significant predictors.