Browsing by Subject "early childhood"

Background: Parenting stress, romantic relationship satisfaction and their associations have been studied extensively, mostly with cross-sectional studies and in different clinical groups. However, parents of young children in non-clinical groups are less studied, especially with longitudinal settings. The aim of this master’s thesis is to investigate the change in maternal parenting stress over time, associations with romantic relationship satisfaction and if romantic relationship satisfaction modifies the change in parenting stress. Methods: Our sample (n = 361) is drawn from the prospective cohort study “The InTraUterine sampling in early pregnancy” (ITU). Participating mothers took part in two follow-up assessments: first at the child’s age of 1–2-years and second at 3 years. Parenting stress was assessed at the first and second follow-ups with the “Parenting Stress Index-Short Form” (PSI-SF) questionnaire with three subscales: parental distress, parent-child dysfunctional interaction and difficult child. Romantic relationship satisfaction was assessed at the first follow-up with the satisfaction subscale form the “Dyadic Adjustment Scale” (DAS) questionnaire. Data were analyzed using linear regression models and mixed models. Child’s age, sex, daycare, and siblings, as well as mother’s education and mental health disorders were controlled for in the analyses. Results: Higher parenting stress at the first follow-up was associated with higher parenting stress at the second follow-up. Higher romantic relationship satisfaction was associated with lower parenting stress at the first follow-up in all the subscales, and at the second follow-up in parental distress and difficult child subscales. Parenting stress related to difficult child’s subscale appeared to increase over time in the entire sample, but in the closer examination the changes in parenting stress were partly different in the groups of high and low romantic relationship satisfaction. Controlling for background variables did not affect the results. Conclusions: The results of this thesis fill the previous gaps in longitudinal settings and studies carried out with mothers of young children in non-clinical groups. It seems that romantic relationship satisfaction may be connected to parenting stress and its change in the early childhood. A broader understanding of these phenomena in the family context may be beneficial for applications, for example in health care, in preventing problems and promoting wellbeing of families with children.

A child's emotional self-regulation skills affects clearly on how he/she behaves, reacts and builds his/hers understanding in different kinds of everyday activities. This research focuses on examining how children's emotional self-regulation skills occur in the everyday activities in Finnish day care and how it will effect on the children's social strategies. There were two research problems: (1) How a child's emotional self-regulation skills occur in the everyday activities in day care? And (2) How emotional self-regulation skills occur in children's social strategies? The theoretical relation of the emotional self-regulation skills and day care's every-day activities were supported by several self-regulation related international researches and theories. Child's Social Strategies were operated through Reunamo's (2007) different views of the relationships between perception and environmental change -theory. The method of this research was quantitative. The data used in this study was a part of Reunamo's (2010) Orientation project which included evaluation of the children's skills (n = 862), child observations (n = 18 364) and interviews (n = 805). 892 different children of the 47 different day cares and 17 child minders participated in the project. The instrument of the child's emotional self-regulation skills was based on teacher's likert scale evaluation of how a child recognizes his/her own feelings and how he/she can deal with them. The data was analyzed by using t-test, correlation, cross tabulation and chi-square. The results of the research brought out that children who had good emotional self-regulation skills had more often a social target on themselves than other children. Good self-regulation skills improved their ability to recognize other children's feelings and affected how they adapted to new situations with others, and to participate eagerly and with initiative to different activities. The poor skills of emotional self-regulation appeared in the child's tendency to use his/her influence and willpower towards other children. They were also strolling everywhere, seeking and waiting more often than other children. The children with poor emotional self-regulation skills didn't get involved in the day care activities as often. Nor did they use their imaginations to role play as other children did. Their social strategies were more often uncertain in social situations and they did not know how to react on them.