Parenting Stress and Parental Bonding

Abstract

Attachment experiences are thought to be important because of their implications for later development. The authors' aim with the questionnaire-based study was to investigate the differences between recalled parental bonding regarding 4 types of maternal and paternal bonding1 with respect to experienced parenting stress caused by child characteristics, parent attributes, and life events under the consideration of the child's gender and age. The authors gathered parental bonding behavior data with the German version2 of the Parental Bonding Instrument (PBI).1 The authors assessed parenting stress with their German version of the "Parenting Stress Index (PSI)."3 They found significant differences among 120 mothers grouped in the 4 maternal and the 4 paternal bonding types regarding parenting stress caused by child, maternal bonding: F(5, 113) = 4.13, p = .002, paternal bonding: F(5, 111) = 8.50, p ≤ .0001, and parent characteristics, maternal bonding: F(5, 113) = 3.33, p = .008, paternal bonding: F(5, 111) = 7.80, p ≤ .0001. The lowest level of parenting stress was experienced by mothers who themselves recalled the "optimal parental bonding type" with respect to the child and parental domain. The authors did not find any significant differences between the 4 maternal, F(5, 113) = 1.25, p = .29, and the 4 paternal, F(5, 111) = 1.87, p = .106, bonding types with respect to the life stress. According to the authors' findings, the representation of attachment relationships seems to have a special impact on the adult's capacity to cope with challenges and stress, either directly or indirectly as an internal working model of attachment. For the clinical practice, these findings seem to recommend the combination of both the PSI and PBI regarding the diagnostic of stressful mother-child system to plan an optimal intervention program.