Abstract
Questionnaire data from two projects on the development of quality assurance instruments for an inpatient rehabilitation/prevention program for parents were used for a secondary analysis. In this analysis, the associations of gains in a psychosocial resource (parenting self-efficacy) and two types of stressors experienced by mothers at the start of treatment (parenting hassles, depressive symptoms) with general life satisfaction and satisfaction with health at the end of treatment were explored. Structural equation modeling was applied to data from N = 1724 female patients. Potential resource-stressor interactions were tested using the Latent Moderated Structural Equations approach. Results showed that parenting hassles were negatively associated with general life satisfaction and satisfaction with health while self-efficacy gains were weakly positively correlated with both variables. No interaction of parenting hassles and self-efficacy gains was found. Depressive symptoms were negatively associated with both satisfaction measures. In these models, self-efficacy gains were not substantially correlated with life satisfaction, but showed a small association with satisfaction with health. There was no significant interaction of depressive symptoms and self-efficacy gains. The findings imply that interventions for distressed mothers—as exemplarily illustrated by this inpatient setting—should focus on identifying and reducing initial stressors as these may continue to impair mothers’ subjective health despite gains in parenting-related resources.
Highlights
Mothers and fathers have to handle a variety of demands they may experience as stressful
The data did not support an interactive influence of resource change and depressive symptoms on the satisfaction measures. In this secondary analysis of quality assurance data collected in the context of an inpatient rehabilitation or prevention program for parents (PRP), significant negative associations of both parenting hassles and depressive symptoms assessed at the start of treatment with mothers’ satisfaction at discharge were found
The finding that parenting hassles experienced at the start of a PRP measure were negatively correlated with satisfaction independent of the small positive effect of resource gains suggests that these problems continue to impair patients’ well-being despite increased subjective competencies to deal with parenting demands
Summary
Mothers and fathers have to handle a variety of demands they may experience as stressful. There is evidence that mothers are more negatively affected by parenting-related hassles [6] and demands resulting from household and family work [7] [8] than fathers. Two German studies have shown that parenting hassles as well as depressive symptoms are prevalent stressors in women seeking preventive or rehabilitative treatment [10] [13]. Another German survey has estimated that there is a need for preventive or rehabilitative interventions in up to 20% of fathers and mothers [14]. Existing interventions vary in terms of setting, scope, and empirical validation
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