Psychological Stresses and Abuse of Kindergarten Children among Working and Non- Working Mothers

Abstract

The study goal was to investigate the stress among working and non-working mothers and the abuse of their kindergarten age children. Two instruments were developed to measure the stress with two versions for working and non-working mothers, and a child abuse tool. Face validity and retest reliability were conducted. The stress tool contained 25 Items. The tools were administered to a sample of 400, working (200) and nonworking (200) mothers in Amman. A t-test for independent samples was used to test the difference between means of stress and child abuse for working and non-working mothers. Also, two-way analysis of variance was conducted to find the mean differences of the three abuse dimensions: physical, psychological and neglects for working and non-working mothers. Results showed statistical difference (p < 0.05) between means of stress in favor of working mothers, but the difference between means of abuse was in favor of nonworking mothers. The results also showed statistical significant differences (p < 0.05) in the three domains of physical, psychological and neglect abuse, in favor of the non-working mothers. Implications and recommendations for future studies were suggested.