Parenting stress as a mediator of parents' negative mood state and behavior problems in children with newly diagnosed cancer

van der Geest, Ivana M., van den Heuvel-Eibrink, Marry M., Passchier, Jan, van den Hoed-Heerschop, Corry, Pieters, Rob and Darlington, Anne-Sophie E. (2014) Parenting stress as a mediator of parents' negative mood state and behavior problems in children with newly diagnosed cancer. Psycho-Oncology. (doi:10.1002/pon.3475). (PMID:24458567)

Abstract

Objectie: the aim was to investigate the influence of parents' negative mood state and parenting stress on behavior in children with newly diagnosed cancer.

Methods: a total of 123 parents (n?=?58 fathers, n?=?65 mothers) of 67 children with newly diagnosed cancer completed three questionnaires separately at the same time measuring parents' negative mood state, parenting stress, and child behavior problems.

Results: parents' negative mood state was weakly correlated to more child behavior problems (r?=?0.31, p?<?0.01), and higher levels of parenting stress were strongly correlated to more child behavior problems (r?=?0.61, p?<?0.01). Mediation analyses indicated that the relationship between parents' negative mood state and child behavior problems (c?=?0.29, p?=?0.02 (fathers); c?=?0.25, p?=?0.04 (mothers)) became non-significant after mediating for parenting stress (c'?=?0.003, p?=?0.98 (fathers); c'?=?0.10, p?=?0.42 (mothers)). The indirect effect of parents' negative mood state and child behavior problems was only significant for fathers (95% CI [0.12; 0.51]), indicating that parenting stress mediates the effect between fathers' negative mood state and child behavior problems.

Conclusions: this is the first study to demonstrate the mediational role of parenting stress in fathers of a child with newly diagnosed cancer

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