Parents and stress: Understanding experiences, context, and responses

Abstract

How do parents experience stress? How does the social environment, economic hardship, and the very nature of parenting contribute to a parent's stress and coping? Learn how parents and their families are influenced - physically, cognitively, and emotionally - by their experiences with stress. Find coping strategies and ways to help families as they navigate stressors in their environment. "In our context as urban public educators (who remain largely European-American), we are tasked with reducing bias in our practice in order to reduce the wide gaps in achievement between white students and students of color. Parental stress research acknowledges that the wide variety in parent appraisal of a child’s behavior is largely connected to personality differences and/or family and social norms. Acknowledgment that those family and social norms are culturally mediated rather than universal could lead to further research that attempts to avoid bias" (eReview author K. Christians).