Artikel: Parenting stress as a mediator of parents’ negative mood state and behavior problems in children with newly diagnosed cancer

Methods: A total of 123 parents (n = 58 fathers, n = 65 mothers) of 67 children with newly diagnosed cancer completed three questionnaires separately at the same time measuring parents’ negative mood state, parenting stress, and child behavior problems.

Results: Parents’ negative mood state was weakly correlated to more child behavior problems (r = 0.31, p < 0.01), and higher levels of parenting stress were strongly correlated to more child behav- ior problems (r = 0.61, p < 0.01). Mediation analyses indicated that the relationship between parents’ negative mood state and child behavior problems (c=0.29, p=0.02 (fathers); c=0.25, p=0.04 (mothers)) became non-significant after mediating for parenting stress (c′ = 0.003, p = 0.98 (fathers); c′ = 0.10, p = 0.42 (mothers)). The indirect effect of parents’ negative mood state and child behavior problems was only significant for fathers (95% CI [0.12; 0.51]), indicating that parenting stress mediates the effect between fathers’ negative mood state and child behavior problems.

Conclusions: This is the first study to demonstrate the mediational role of parenting stress in fathers of a child with newly diagnosed cancer.