Parenting Stress and Parenting Style: An Exploration in the Mothers of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disordered Children

All people have 'behaviours' in order to function in this world aptly. Sometimes it is behaviour that moves us towards our goals and sometimes the behaviour itself may become a problem and interferes with the proper functioning of an individual. The children with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder are quite different from normal children both in behavioural as well as learning aspects. As AD/HD children are very energetic and the symptoms of AD/HD are most often present from the age of three, and sometimes last into adult life, the burden of carrying and handling them are more readily felt by the mothers. Mothers of AD/HD children are challenged and frustrated from time to time by the noncompliance and misbehavior of their children which makes them react negatively to such behaviours of their children. They were found to have more stress, less parenting satisfaction, lower self-confidence, less warmth and involvement with their children, used corporal punishment and higher levels of authoritarian parenting styles. These were seen to be more significant than the mothers of non problematic children. It was found that mothers' behaviour and disciplinary practices itself made the child more prone to express symptoms like nonresponsiveness, over-reaction, behaviour problem etc. The paper explores multi-dimensional parenting behaviour and parenting stress of mothers of AD/HD children and tries to see whether there is significant difference in parenting stress amongst the mothers of AD/HD children who adopt non-deviant, fully deviant and partially deviant mothering. Results show that Mothers of AD/HD children adopt positive as well as negative dimensions of parenting behavior, to a great extent and belong to a partially deviant parenting. Mothers of AD/HD children adopt different styles of parenting behavior and it differs significantly in the parenting stress and its sub-factors, which they experience.