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The Longitudinal Association Between Maternal Parenting Stress and Spousal Supportiveness

Parenting stress can negatively impact mothers and the family unit. Previous research has identified spousal supportiveness as a critical resource in helping reduce maternal parenting stress, whereas other research demonstrates that parenting stress may reduce supportive behaviors over time. However, it is unclear whether the association between spousal supportiveness and maternal parenting stress is robust over an extended period of children’s development, or whether economic hardship impacts change in both constructs. Using 4 waves of data from 612 mothers in the Fragile Family and Child Wellbeing study, we explored whether maternal parenting stress was associated with change in spousal supportiveness and whether spousal supportiveness simultaneously was associated with change in maternal parenting stress. We examined these bidirectional associations while accounting for economic hardship. We found parenting stress and perceptions of spousal supportiveness changed at varying rates throughout the 8 years of the study. We also found that when the focal child was 1 year old, perceptions of spousal supportiveness were associated with increases in mothers’ parenting stress, whereas when the child was 3 and 5 years old, perceptions of spousal supportiveness were associated with a faster decrease in mothers’ parenting stress. Maternal parenting stress was not associated with perceptions of spousal supportiveness over time. We also found that mothers with greater economic hardship showed a slower decline in perceptions of spousal supportiveness compared with the decline in perceptions of spousal supportiveness observed without economic hardship in the model. We conclude by providing both developmental and practical implications for helping mothers.