Parenting Stress, Child Behavior Problems, and Household Chaos: Examining Parenting in Early Head Start Families

Parenting is a primary mechanism through which children develop. Much is known about how parenting influences development over time; it is also critical to know what shapes specific aspects of parenting, particularly for families with higher socioeconomic risk.

The current study examined how parenting stress, child behavior problems, and household chaos at child age 2 were associated with maternal sensitivity and detachment at child age 3.

Data were drawn from a nationally representative longitudinal study of mother–child dyads in EHS across ages 2 and 3. Analyses were conducted using linear regression, with child gender, single motherhood, and income-to-needs ratio as covariates, and longitudinal weighting to adjust for attrition and representation. Parenting stress was examined as a moderator and interactions were probed.

A significant three-way interaction among parenting stress, behavior problems, and household chaos on sensitivity found that at high levels of household chaos, as parenting stress increased, sensitivity decreased, but only for families experiencing low levels of behavior problems. In the detachment model, a two-way interaction indicated that at high levels of parenting stress, low levels of behavior problems were associated with more detachment. Additionally, as behavior problems increased, maternal detachment decreased, but only in the context of low household chaos.

These findings add a nuanced understanding to existing determinants of parenting and cumulative risk literature, suggesting there is additional risk to parenting behaviors as risks in multiple domains converge, though these relationships are complex and higher risk in multiple domains was not always multiplicative.