Abstract
Research has demonstrated the short- and long-term impacts of maternal mental health and well-being on children's emotional and behavioral outcomes. It is thus important to better understand the antecedents of maternal depression and stress. The aim of this study was to determine whether the contribution of perceived paternal involvement to account for mothers' depression and parental stress was mediated by relationship factors such as parenting alliance and dyadic adjustment. A second aim was to determine whether these relationships hold equally true in mothers of infants and young toddlers (0–24 months) and mothers of older children (25 months and older). Cross-sectional data were collected from 447 mothers. Mothers reported on their perceptions of paternal involvement with childcare responsibilities, dyadic adjustment, parenting alliance, parenting stress, and depression. Multi-sample path modeling analyses were conducted. Results revealed that perceived paternal involvement was positively related to both dyadic adjustment and parental alliance, that parenting alliance was negatively related to all three subscales of parenting stress and mothers' depression but that dyadic adjustment was negatively related to parenting distress (one subscale of parenting stress) and mothers' depression. Results from the multi-sample analyses indicated that the pattern of relationships was the same in the two groups, but that the model was not invariant. The most notable difference was that parenting alliance did not significantly account for depression in the mothers of younger children. Correlates of maternal mental health and well-being identified in this study could be useful when designing psychological interventions for mothers and fathers.
Highlights
A growing body of research clearly indicates the contribution of maternal mental health and well-being to children’s behavioral and emotional outcomes [1,2,3,4,5,6], but fewer studies have focused on the relational predictors of maternal mental health and well-being
Significant negative associations have been reported between paternal involvement and maternal parenting stress [12]
These suggested that perceived paternal involvement, parenting alliance, and dyadic adjustment were significantly higher in mothers of younger children and that two subscales of parenting stress were significantly higher in the mothers of the older children, effect sizes were generally small (η2 of 0.01 is a small effect whereas and η2 of 0.06 is a medium sized effect according to Cohen [41]
Summary
A growing body of research clearly indicates the contribution of maternal mental health and well-being to children’s behavioral and emotional outcomes [1,2,3,4,5,6], but fewer studies have focused on the relational predictors of maternal mental health and well-being. Recent research [14,15,16] suggests that elements of mothers’ relationships with their partner might contribute to explaining the link between paternal involvement and maternal mental health and well-being. We posited the hypothesis that mothers’ satisfaction with their relationship with their partner, operationalized as dyadic adjustment and parenting alliance, mediates the relationship between mothers’ perceptions of paternal involvement and two dimensions of maternal mental health and well-being: parenting stress and depression. The constructs of paternal involvement (involvement with parenting responsibilities) have been studied in relation to mothers’ mental health and well-being. The extent to which mothers’ perceptions of paternal involvement help account for their mental health and well-being remain a little-known field of study
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