Citation

Mangelsdorf SN, Mehl MR, Qiu J, Alisic E. J. Pediatr. Psychol. 2019; 44(3): 311-322.

Affiliation

Jack Brockhoff Child Health and Wellbeing Program, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, The University of Melbourne.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2019, Oxford University Press)

DOI

10.1093/jpepsy/jsy107

PMID

30615178

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: In the aftermath of a child injury, children and parents can jointly experience acute stress symptoms. Optimism and self-efficacy might buffer against post-traumatic stress disorder. Knowing that children are innately receptive to parent modeling, we were interested in exploring how parent acute stress, optimism, and self-efficacy might transpire in parent-child interactions and whether any differences existed between mothers and fathers.

METHODS: We recruited 71 families of seriously injured children who were hospitalized for at least 24 hr. Parents completed self-report measures of acute stress, optimism, and self-efficacy. Children wore the Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR(2)); Mehl, M. R. [2017]. The electronically activated recorder (EAR): A method for the naturalistic observation of daily social behavior. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 26, 184-190) for a 2-day period postdischarge. The EAR recorded ambient sounds for 30 s every 5 min. The audio recordings were transcribed and coded. We derived a percentage of time spent with each parent (interaction time), and average ratings of the emotional tone of voice for each speaker.

RESULTS: Overall, parental acute stress and self-efficacy were not associated with interaction time or emotional tone, and parents generally spent less time with older children. Compared to fathers, mothers spent significantly more time with their child, particularly for daughters, but mothers did not differ from fathers in emotional tone, acute stress, optimism, or self-efficacy. For mothers, optimism may be associated with greater interaction time and more positive emotional tone.

CONCLUSIONS: The present study highlighted parent gender differences in time spent with children and enabled the inclusion of more fathers using a naturalistic observational tool.

Language: en