Publication Date

2018

Document Type

Dissertation/Thesis

First Advisor

Pittman, Laura D.

Degree Name

M.A. (Master of Arts)

Legacy Department

Department of Psychology

LCSH

Clinical psychology; Psychology

Abstract

There is growing evidence that parenting stress maintains a strong influence on child externalizing problems; however this link has not been widely studied with adolescent populations. Adolescence can be a period of transitions and is linked to rising levels of parenting stress and negative adolescent outcomes. Thus, it is important to explore the influence of parenting stress on adolescent externalizing problems with parents of adolescents to inform how to parent adolescents, reduce the risk of adolescent deviant behaviors, and promote a smoother transition into young adulthood. Previous evidence also suggests that parenting stress is linked to parenting behaviors, parenting behaviors are linked to child externalizing problems, and parenting behaviors may mediate the association between parenting stress and externalizing problems. As such, the current study explored the associations between parenting stress, parenting behaviors, and adolescent externalizing problems as well as whether parenting behaviors mediated the link between parenting stress and adolescent externalizing problems. In this study, 333 biological mothers (Mage = 40.15, SDage = 6.86; 75.7% Caucasian) with 12- to 17-year-old adolescents (Mage = 14.17, SDage = 1.82; 52.3% male) were recruited from Amazon's Mechanical Turk and completed an online survey. Hierarchical regression analyses found that higher parenting stress was associated with higher adolescent externalizing problems, even when controlling for cumulative risk, mother and child age, child gender, number of children in household, child disability, and family disability. Higher psychological and lax control and lower acceptance was positively associated with all adolescent externalizing problems, except for a non-significant association between lax control and reactive aggression. Lastly, higher parenting stress was significantly associated with higher psychological and lax control and lower acceptance. Tests of mediation and post-hoc moderation were also conducted. Psychological control and acceptance partially mediated the association between parenting stress and all considered adolescent externalizing problems, while lax control only partially mediated the association between parenting stress and adolescent proactive aggression. Adolescent gender moderated the associations between parenting stress and proactive aggression and lax control and proactive and reactive aggression. Implications for parent-adolescent interactions and families with parenting stress are discussed.

Comments

Advisors: Laura D. Pittman.||Committee members: David J. Bridgett; Karen J. White.||Includes illustrations.||Includes bibliographical references.

Extent

123 pages

Language

eng

Publisher

Northern Illinois University

Rights Statement

In Copyright

Rights Statement 2

NIU theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from Huskie Commons for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without the written permission of the authors.

Media Type

Text

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