Stress experienced by mothers of young children

Abstract

Every stage of a child's maturation requires psychological adaptation by the parent. This study was designed to find categories of events that mothers of preschool children find stressful and to categorize the events by context of the stress for the mothers. Data were collected from a purposive sample of 153 married mothers, employed and unemployed, who each had at least one child two or three years of age. A semistructured interview schedule was used. Events described related mostly to typical egocentric behavior of preschool children struggling for autonomy or to events in which the child's well-being was threatened in some way. Events were categorized into four contexts: stress due to the child's negative behavior, stress due to conflict between other demands on the mother and the child's needs, threat to the mother's image or self-esteem, and threat to the child's well-being.