Text in Afrikaans / The earlier conceptualisation of the roles of fathers that only focused on the breadwinner, has been replaced by a number of unique roles that are fulfilled by the father. The different aspects of fatherhood have a reciprocal influence on each other and can influence the father’s experience. The goal of this qualitative study was to explore the father’s experience of twins in their middle childhood. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight fathers. From this study it became clear that fatherhood of twins can generally be seen as a positive experience, but fathers of twins face extra challenges that lack in the case of single children. The researcher came to the conclusion that by being aware of the changes in each developmental stage, the father can prepare himself better for fatherhood and handle situations that he experiences at a particular moment. Various suggestions that can be useful for parental guidance and preparing fathers of twins for fatherhood were made. / Social Work / M. Diac. (Play Therapy)

The purpose of this study was to explore the differences in how parents of ADHD children and non-ADHD parents attribute undesirable and prosocial child behavior, and to determine if attributions about undesirable child behavior influence parents' perceived levels of parenting stress. Parent attributions from 69 parent-child dyads, half with a child ADHD diagnosis, were measured coding videotaped interactions. Results indicated that parents of ADHD children do not make significantly more stable attributions about undesirable child behavior than non-ADHD parents. Additionally, compared to non-ADHD parents, parents of ADHD children did not make significantly more unstable attributions about their children's prosocial behaviors. Regarding parenting stress, individuals who generated higher frequencies of stable attributions also appeared to maintain more negative views of their children's behaviors in comparison to other children.

Recently, researchers have begun to explore the associated impacts of ADHD on parent and family functioning, with an increasing focus on parenting stress. Accumulating empirical evidence is mixed, suggesting that parents of children with ADHD report increased levels of parenting stress when compared to parents of children with learning disabilities, and parents of non-referred children, but report equally stressful parenting levels when compared to parents of children with externalizing behavior problems. Results of the present study comparing reported parenting stress levels between parents of children with ADHD, children with internalizing behavior problems, and nonreferred children, were partially supportive of results found in past studies indicating higher levels of parenting stress among parents of children with ADHD. However, strong gender effects were found between mothers and fathers, which mediated the overall results.

Stress plays a key role in our daily lives, influencing our emotional state, productivity, and health. One particular role in life, being a parent, has attracted significant attention in the research world in terms of the amount of stress parents experience in relation to different aspects of being parents. A life change that many parents, particularly mothers, are experiencing in increasing numbers is their return to college. This study compared reports of parenting stress and perceptions of the family environment between two groups of mothers. The first is a group of 32 mothers who were working 30 or more hours a week outside the home and were not enrolled in college while the second group consists of 31 mothers who were in college full-time and working less than 10 hours a week outside the home. All of the mothers were between the ages of 25 and 45 and had at least one child between the ages 5 and 12 years old. In both groups the mothers verified that their child(ren) was (were) without any diagnosis of an emotional, behavioral, or learning problem. A series of one-way multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVAs) were performed. Results indicated there were no significant group effects related to the overall parenting stress expressed by the mothers. A significant group effect was noted (F = 5.31;\ p < .05) in that the working mothers reported a greater level of perceived poor health than the mothers who were attending college full-time. In relation to the mothers' perception of their family environment, a significant group effect (F = 6.23;\ p < .05) was found indicating that the working mothers reported a greater emphasis on ethical and religious issues and values.

Huang, Chen. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2013. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 52-61). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstracts and appendix also in Chinese.

Text in Afrikaans / The earlier conceptualisation of the roles of fathers that only focused on the breadwinner, has been replaced by a number of unique roles that are fulfilled by the father. The different aspects of fatherhood have a reciprocal influence on each other and can influence the father’s experience. The goal of this qualitative study was to explore the father’s experience of twins in their middle childhood. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight fathers. From this study it became clear that fatherhood of twins can generally be seen as a positive experience, but fathers of twins face extra challenges that lack in the case of single children. The researcher came to the conclusion that by being aware of the changes in each developmental stage, the father can prepare himself better for fatherhood and handle situations that he experiences at a particular moment. Various suggestions that can be useful for parental guidance and preparing fathers of twins for fatherhood were made. / Social Work / M. Diac. (Play Therapy)

Adolescent mothers are a vulnerable population for a multitude of reasons. For one, adolescent mothers concurrently undergo two significant developmental phases and transitions: adolescence and parenting. Adolescence is the psychosocial period of adjustment marked by dramatic neural, hormonal, cognitive, psychological, physical, and biological changes. While adolescence is a time of cognitive advancement, it is also a time of stress, identity development, peer pressure, mood disruptions, and emotion regulation difficulties. While parenthood presents with positive changes, it simultaneously introduces challenges, such as increases in caretaking responsibilities, time commitment, and distress. Additionally, as statistics have shown, many adolescent mothers face a host of risk factors (e.g., poverty, low socioeconomic status (SES), and low educational attainment), making these “adolescent mothers at risk (AMARs)” a highly vulnerable population. Adolescence is also a time when substance use initiation and experimentation occur. While some level of substance use is normative among adolescents, substance use is especially detrimental for adolescent mothers and their children. According to the literature, substance-using mothers differ from their non-substance-using counterparts in terms of how the former parent their children. For example, substance-using mothers tend to display decreased levels of warmth (Barnow, Schuckit, Lucht, John, & Freyberger, 2002; Gruber and Taylor, 2006; Mayes & Truman, 2002; Suchman et al., 2007) as well as extreme styles of parenting (e.g., minimal supervision and intolerant attitudes) (Suchman & Luthar, 2000). This dissertation used archived data to examine AMARs and explore their levels of distress tolerance, substance use, and parenting attitudes and beliefs. Specifically, this dissertation sought to address the following questions: Is there an association between distress tolerance, substance use, and parenting attitudes and beliefs? Does substance use mediate the association between distress tolerance and parenting attitudes and beliefs? Seventy-two mothers living in nine Transitional Living Programs (TLPs) across a Northeast state were interviewed. Participants were aged 16-22 years with a mean age of 19. Participants were predominantly Latino and African American, and nearly half of the participants reported having a history of living in foster care or group home with an average of five years spent in these institutions. Data were collected from the baseline interview of a pilot randomized control trial examining an intervention for increasing positive parenting among homeless AMARs. Distress tolerance was operationalized via the Distress Tolerance Scale (Simons & Gaher, 2005), and parenting attitudes and beliefs were operationalized through the Adult Adolescent Parenting Inventory-2 (Bavolek & Keene, 2010). Lifetime and recent frequency of substance use was also examined. Race/ethnicity was controlled for in all analyses because the past literature has documented racial/ethnic minority adolescent mothers experiencing more adversities and vulnerabilities compared to their White counterparts (Huang et al., 2014, 2019). Consistent with the literature, we found an association between distress tolerance and substance use, substance use and parenting attitudes and beliefs, as well as distress tolerance and parenting attitudes and beliefs. Specifically, there was an association between low distress tolerance and high levels of substance use; high levels of substance use and poor parenting attitudes and beliefs; and low distress tolerance and poor parenting attitudes and beliefs. In terms of the mediation analysis, only substance use within the past six months mediated the relationship between distress tolerance and parenting attitudes and beliefs. In other words, low distress tolerance led to higher levels of substance use within the past six months, which in turn led to poorer parenting attitudes and beliefs. One implication of the results is that recent substance use, rather than lifetime history, has a more salient effect on parenting attitudes and beliefs. Overall, the majority of the AMARs in the current study’s sample demonstrated resilience and had scores reflective of positive parenting attitudes and beliefs despite their notably low levels of distress tolerance. While the results of the study are promising, they should be interpreted with caution considering several limitations, including a small effect size from the mediation analysis and potential underreporting among AMARs. Future research should continue to explore various iterations of the research question (e.g., different combinations of distress tolerance, substance use, and parenting attitudes and beliefs as the independent, mediating, and outcome variables) and psychometric properties of the measures utilized.

The effects of an Adlerian-based parent education program on parents' attitudes toward their children's behavior and techniques used in child rearing were examined in this study. Parents in one primary elementary school were invited by letter to participate in a parent education program.

Previous studies highlighted the importance of parental support for development of mastery of control and depressive symptoms. These studies tended to examine one time wave and outcomes related to that period, forwarding an assumption parenting behaviours do not change as children age. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979-Children and Young Adults, this study filled the gap by examining children's supportive environment at three time points and determining how levels of support across these points impacted children's depression and mastery at 18 years of age. Relative stability of mothers' supportive parenting (i.e., encouragement of social maturity, warmth and affection, and physical punishment) at early childhood, middle childhood, and early adolescence was examined by Kendall's tau correlations. Encouragement of social maturity showed relative stability between early and middle childhood and middle childhood and early adolescence; warmth and affection showed relative stability between early and middle childhood, and physical punishment showed relative stability across all time points. Absolute stability was examined using hierarchical linear modelling and Wilcoxon signed-rank test. No instances were found. Latent class growth analysis identified different trajectories of supportive environment among participants and three groups were identified. Multiple regressions conducted to examine how different trajectories affect late adolescents' depression and mastery found children of mothers from the least supportive group had statistically significant higher level of depression and lower level of mastery of control at 18 years of age; children of mothers from the progressively and continuously supportive group had similarly positive results of depression and mastery.

The purpose of the present study was to examine whether differences exist between reports of parental stress in Mexican American and Caucasian mothers of children with ADHD. A second purpose was to examine whether there were child and family characteristics that made unique contributions to levels of parenting stress in Mexican American parents of children with ADHD. A third purpose was to examine the role that level of acculturation plays in the Mexican American mothers' reports of stress. Dependent measures used in this study include the Parenting Stress Index (PSI) and the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL).