Exploring the Relationship Between Parent Mental Health and Children’s Academic Coping

• Published in: School mental health Vol. 15; no. 3; pp. 913 - 926
• Main Authors: Fiat, Aria E., Thayer, Andrew J., Miller, Faith G., Thibodeau, Eric L., Cook, Clayton R.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Springer US 01.09.2023; Springer; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Academic Achievement; Adolescents; Behavior; Behavior Patterns; Behavioral Science and Psychology; Child and School Psychology; Child Development; Children; Children & youth; Clinical Psychology; Coping; Developmental Psychology; Education; Emotions; Experience; Influence; Life Satisfaction; Mental Health; Original Paper; Parents; Parents & parenting; Peers; Problem solving; Psychology; Relationship; Standardized Tests; Stress; Stress Management; Stress Variables; Teenagers; Parent mental health; Latent profile analysis; Academic stress; Coping; Stress
• ISSN: 1866-2625; 1866-2633
• DOI: 10.1007/s12310-023-09595-w

Academic stress can impede children’s social, behavioral, and academic functioning, but how children cope with that stress can moderate its effects. As a primary influence on children’s development, parents represent a critical entry point for intervention to enhance children’s coping. Despite the importance of parenting on children’s ability to adaptively cope with academic stress, little is known about the relationship between parent mental health and children’s academic coping. This study builds upon earlier work in which we used Latent Profile Analysis to empirically derive three parent mental health profiles ( flourishing , resilient , and surviving ) reflecting parents’ typical response and adaptation to stressful life events. In this study, we utilized structural equation mixture modeling to explore how parent mental health (as reflected by profile membership) is associated with the ways children cope with academic stress. Participants were 115 adult parents with typically developing children between the ages of 5 and 15 in the mid-western United States. Data were collected using the parent report form of the Response to Academic Stress Questionnaire, as well as three brief measures of parent stress and life satisfaction. As hypothesized, parent profile membership was significantly associated with ways their children cope with academic stress. Specifically, children of flourishing parents with higher wellbeing and lower distress used more primary control coping (e.g., changing their environment) and less disengagement coping (e.g., withdrawal from stressor). This study is novel in the way mixture modeling analytic approaches were used to explore how microsystemic factors (i.e., parent mental health) relate to children’s functioning in school. This study provides a foundation for applied research seeking to identify optimal ways of enhancing children’s academic coping by further highlighting the critical role that parent mental health may play.