Does parental AD/HD exacerbate the negative effects of child AD/HD on parenting?

Abstract

Children’s AD/HD often elicits a negative parental response but little is known about the impact of parental AD/HD on parenting. In this thesis, I examined the impact of child and parent AD/HD and their interaction on parenting. In Study 1, these effects were examined using questionnaire-based measures of parenting provided by 95 mothers of school children. In Study 2, these self reports were replaced by direct observations of mother-child interactions and Expressed Emotion (EE) in 192 mothers of preschoolers. In Study 3, they were extended further by adding measures of empathy and by examining both mothers’ (N= 277) and fathers’ (N-86) parenting. The results demonstrated that child AD/HD symptoms were associated with negative parenting and hostile EE. Maternal AD/HD symptoms were positively associated with hostile EE, and negatively with empathy and positive parenting. Interestingly, mothers with high AD/HD symptoms had more positive and less negative parenting and personal distress for the children with high AD/HD symptoms. In contrast, fathers with high AD/HD symptoms had more negative parenting for the children with high AD/HD symptoms. These findings raised the question of whether the effects of child-parental similarity in AD/HD generalise to emotional/depressive characteristics. An analysis revealed that child-mother similarity in emotional/depressive characteristics decreased Negative Expressed Emotion (NEE). Indeed, mothers with high depressive characteristics displayed the same levels of NEE regardless of the severity of child emotional symptoms. The results of the thesis highlight the importance of taking account of maternal (and paternal) AD/HD when assessing the parenting of children with AD/HD. The findings may be especially significant in planning new clinical services and treatments for AD/HD.

More information

Identifiers

Catalogue record

Export record

ASCII CitationAtomBibTeXData Cite XMLDublin CoreDublin CoreEP3 XMLEndNoteHTML CitationHTML CitationHTML ListJSONMETSMODSMPEG-21 DIDLOpenURL ContextObjectOpenURL ContextObject in SpanRDF+N-TriplesRDF+N3RDF+XMLRIOXX2 XMLReferReference ManagerSimple Metadata