Predictors of subjective stress in a sample of new parents

Abstract

On the basis of Lazarus and Folkman's (1984) cognitive-phenomenological theory of stress and coping, it was poposed that the level of strain (or subjective stress) associated with new parenthood is related to a person's generalised control beliefs, their appraisal of the event on several different dimensions (importance, anticipated difficulty, familiarity, and ambiguity), and a number of event-related characteristics (delivay complications. infant temperament, and the accumulation of recent and concurrent stressors). Langitudinal data collected from a sample of 123 couples during the transition to parenthood provided some support—even when the level of initial distress was controlled—for the proposed effects of these variables. Importance of the event, anticipated difficulty of the event, familiarity with the event, infant temperament, and the experience of recent and concurrent stressors emerged as distinctive predictors of at least one of the measures of strain (postnatal anxiety and appraisal of the event's stressfulness). There was also evidence to suggest the event was appraised as more stressful by females than males and that effects of control beliefs. anticipated difficulty of the event, accumulation of recent and concurrent stressors, and infant temperament an postnatal anxiety, differed for the two sexes.