provides a socially defined marker of mature status, a sense of permanence, and feelings of personal efficacy (Bigner, 2010; Holden, 2015). Recent evolutionary views also reinforce pronatalist perspectives by proposing that, due to natural selection processes, our genetic heritage provides a significant biological propensity for adults to assume parental roles. Although these natural tendencies to become parents can be changed, considerable effort is needed to consciously alter such predispositions (Buss, 2005). This means that pronatalist and unrealistically positive views of parenting often are dominant, while more objective assessments of the challenges and stresses involved are neglected. The purpose of this chapter is to apply concepts from family stress theory to provide a more realistic and balanced conception of parenting, which includes the pervasive and variable presence of both normative and nonnormative forms of parental stress.
The Reality of Parenthood and Parental Stress
More realistic views of parenthood often explicitly or implicitly reject the idea that motherhood and fatherhood are exclusively negative or positive experiences. Instead, newer more reality-based conceptions recognize that caring for, disciplining, and socializing children often involves a blend of positive, negative, and rather mundane experiences for parents (Basile, 2014; Cloud, 2011, Eibach & Mock, 2011). An array of common parental experiences include powerful bonds and attachments, personal fulfillment, great satisfactions from children’s achievements, and great sadness when they fail. Children and youth often contribute to parents’ daily hassles, tensions, anxiety, distress, depression, and severe trauma. Parenthood can be characterized as a deeply meaningful challenge in life but also one of the most arduous responsibilities that adults will ever face. Romanticized conceptions are increasingly seen as illusory, simplistic and distorted images of a much more complex circumstance (Cloud, 2011; Eibach & Mock, 2011).
A more realistic view of parenthood is that of a complex circumstance of life where stress is a normative experience that changes from moment to moment and over the long term. A growing segment of the U.S. population appears to be more realistic about parenthood and is choosing such alternatives as voluntary childlessness more frequently and feeling more comfortable with this child-free option. Recent evidence indicates that a child-free lifestyle often can have few psychological costs for those who make this life choice (Bures, Koropeckyj-Cox, & Loree, 2009; Kelly, 2009; Koropeckyj-Cox et al., 2007; Umberson et al., 2010).
Feminist thought also questions the “normative imperative” for women to bear children as a primary means for defining meaningful identities for themselves. Although most feminists acknowledge that motherhood can be a rewarding experience, they also argue that we should reject the idealized “cult of motherhood” and recognize that being a mother is not always the most important thing that women can do nor the only way women can be fulfilled. In the end, motherhood is more frequently viewed as a personal choice, just like many other pathways in life that are increasingly available to women (Basile, 2014; Hu, 2015).
Realistic views also are reflected in the work of economists who seek to establish the economic value of children as either assets or liabilities rather than simply viewing parenthood through idealized conceptions of inevitable happiness (Folbre, 2008). Economic metaphors are used to show how parents’ investments and balance sheet decisions are used to define the great variability that exists in the positive and negative stress experienced by parents from raising the young (Eibach & Mock, 2011).
A key source of parents’ stresses is their social cognitions or mental models of themselves as parents, which can lead them to evaluate the challenges and benefits of parenting in realistic ways (Eibach & Mock, 2011; Finegood, Raver, DeJoseph & Blair 2017; Vernhet et al., 2019). These mental models of parenthood are shaped by their own self-perceptions, how they perceive others (e.g., their children and youth) as well as attitudes, attributions, and expectations they have developed within particular cultural contexts. How parents appraise themselves in terms of such social meanings is important for defining the onset, continuity, intensity, and management of parental stress (Deater-Deckard, Smith, Ivy, & Petrill, 2005; Eibach & Mock, 2011). Stressful experiences occur and require management throughout the life course, often on a daily basis. Such everyday experiences of parental stress can occur when parents are fatigued by an infant’s inconsistent sleep–awake patterns, a toddler who bites a classmate in childcare, a teenage daughter who demands later curfew hours for dating, the difficult behavior of an autistic child, or when a teenage son is arrested for possession of marijuana (Rich, 2017).
Parents become stressed by difficult job circumstances that compel them to spend less positive time, be less supportive, and to use less effective discipline with their children (Kremer-Sadlik & Paugh, 2007). Stress for parents also becomes problematic when work demands are high and when parents lack feelings of self-control in their work environments (Ohu et al., 2018). In fact, parental stress can result from variability in several external circumstances including socioeconomic resources, family structural characteristics, work- and career-related factors, as well as childcare arrangements. Recent findings make clear that the multiple roles of parents often influence the degree of stress they experience within the parent–child relationship (Deater-Deckard, 2004; Rich, 2017; Umberson et al., 2010).
The point of these diverse examples is that some degree of parental stress is likely to be a universal experience for parents and their surrogates, including grandparents, aunts, uncles, stepparents, foster parents, and others who perform parental roles. The ubiquitous nature of these experiences underscores the importance of understanding how stress contributes to the effective or ineffective functioning of parents and other caregivers (Crnic et al., 2005; Crnic & Low, 2002; Hennon et al., 2008; Letiecq et al., 2008). In contrast, despite its universality, the precise manner and degree that parental stress is experienced may vary greatly across parents and depends upon many factors (Deater-Deckard, 2004). Individuals, in certain social circumstances, such as some single parents and lower SES families are more likely to experience parental stress due to limited resources of a financial, social and psychological nature (e.g., limited energy, time, and money). These deficiencies leave parents more vulnerable to typical stressors that are pervasive, vary widely in intensity, and subject to diverse circumstances (Crouter & Booth, 2004).
The primary purpose of this chapter is to interpret the research on parental stress using concepts central to family stress theory, which can provide greater understanding to this aspect of the parent–child relationship (Hennon et al., 2009; Hennon & Peterson, 2007; Hill, 1949; Lavee, 2013; McCubbin & Patterson, 1983; Patterson, 2002). Key concepts from family stress theory used to accomplish this goal are stress and crisis, stressor event (or stressor), resources, definition of the stressor (or perception), coping, and adaptation. A case study will be presented and used periodically to illustrate points in this chapter.
Addressing these issues and concepts will provide greater understanding about (a) why the experience of parental stress is so common, (b) why the degree of stress varies widely within the population of parents, (c) why parents vary in their capacities to cope with and adapt to stress, (d) what linkages exist between parental stress and the adjustment (or maladjustment) of parents and children, and (e) what strategies exist for controlling and reducing adverse parental stress.
Rethinking the research literature on parental stress in terms of family stress theory also provides a more systemic or family systems view of this area of knowledge. Previous research and the conceptualization of parental stress has been largely an application of psychological theory (Crnic & Low, 2002; Deater-Deckard, 2004) by emphasizing stress as experienced through the internal dynamics of individuals (e.g., parents) who experience psychological “distress” (or similar forms of affect such as anxiety, depression, trauma, strain, uneasiness), while limited attention has been devoted to “relationship” or “systemic” conceptions. In contrast, this chapter reinterprets parental stress more extensively as changes in systemic family relationships that encompass parent–child relationships without ignoring the individual psychological experience of stress (Lavee, 2013).
