Contributions of maternal parenting stress and mental health to parenting practices and children’s developmental outcomes
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Previous studies suggested that children of mothers with higher parental stress scores or mental health difficulties may be more likely than others to have developmental delays. Additionally, such parents may have a lower frequency of engagement in play and stimulating activities with their children compared to their peers. Emerging literature has also explored the bidirectional association between parenting stress and maternal mental illness. Further, studies have suggested poor child developmental outcomes in socioeconomically deprived settings and in events that could lead to the disruption of maternal and child health services, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. However, there is scarce or mixed evidence on the contributions of parenting stress to children's developmental outcomes in socioeconomically deprived settings such as sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). In addition, no study has examined the potential worsening of the association between maternal mental illness and child developmental outcomes at birth during the COVID-19 pandemic. This thesis aimed to fill these gaps by examining the contributions of parenting stress and maternal mental health on children's developmental outcomes in the context of socioeconomically deprived settings and birth during COVID-19, using linked administrative health datasets from Scotland and longitudinal studies from the SSA. Chapter 1 reviews evidence on predictors of parental stress, its links to maternal mental health, parenting practices and children's developmental outcomes. Chapter 2 examines sociodemographic predictors of maternal parenting stress in the SSA. The results showed that mothers' income and their level of education were associated with reduced parental stress scores (PSS). However, this study found that marital status, mother's age, child's age, and the number of children under five years were not associated with PSS. In Chapter 3, this study employed a Random Intercept Cross-Lagged Panel Model (RI-CLPM) to examine the longitudinal relationships between parental stress, caregiving stimulation, and child development. The findings showed a reciprocal association between caregivers' stimulation practices and children's developmental outcomes. However, such associations were not consistent with parental stress, stimulation practices and children's developmental outcomes. Chapter 4 investigates whether maternal mental health (both prenatal and postnatal) mediates the relationship between socioeconomic deprivation and children's developmental outcomes in the context of Greater Glasgow and Clyde, Scotland. The results showed that maternal mental health assessed by a history of hospital admissions mediated the relationship between SED and children's developmental outcomes, but only to a small extent. Chapter 5 examines the interaction effects of maternal mental health disorders and being born during COVID-19 on children's developmental outcomes in Scotland. The results showed that being born during the COVID-19 pandemic and maternal MH influenced child development with relatively small effects, with mixed findings on their combined presence. Lastly, Chapter 6 provides an overall discussion of the findings presented in this thesis. In conclusion, the findings align with the existing literature on the potential association between parental stress, maternal mental health, parenting practices, and children's developmental outcomes. These findings, therefore, underscore the need to invest in maternal mental health interventions and address predictors of mental health, such as parental stress and socioeconomic deprivation. In addition, there is a need to explore the potential long-term effects of both being born during the pandemic and maternal mental health on children's developmental outcomes.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".