Pediatric parenting stress among parents of children with type 1 diabetes: the role of self-efficacy, responsibility, and fear.
OBJECTIVE
Parents of children with type 1 diabetes are crucial to promoting positive disease adaptation and health outcomes among these youngsters, yet this success may come at some consequence to parents' own well-being. Little research has examined the stress faced by parents, or explored the psychological and behavioral correlates of their stress.


METHODS
One hundred and thirty-four parents of children with type 1 diabetes completed measures of diabetes self-efficacy, responsibility for diabetes management, fear of hypoglycemia, and a recently developed measure of pediatric parenting stress (the Pediatric Inventory for Parents [PIP]; R. Streisand, S. Braniecki, K. P. Tercyak, & A. E. Kazak, 2001).


RESULTS
Bivariate analyses suggest that pediatric parenting stress is multifaceted; the frequency of parenting stress is negatively related to child age and family socioeconomic status and positively related to single parent status and regimen status (injections vs. insulin pump). Difficulty of parenting stress is negatively related to child age and positively related to regimen status. In multivariate analyses, a significant portion of the variance in stress frequency (32%) and difficulty (19%) are associated with parent psychological and behavioral functioning, including lower self-efficacy, greater responsibility for diabetes management, and greater fear of hypoglycemia.


CONCLUSIONS
Each area of parent functioning associated with pediatric parenting stress is amenable to behavioral intervention aimed at stress reduction or control and improvement of parent psychological and child-health outcomes.
Streisand
Randi
R
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Children's National Medical Center, Washington, Federal District of Columbia 20010, USA. rstreis@cnmc.org
Swift
Erika
E
Wickmark
Tara
T
Chen
Rusan
R
Holmes
Clarissa S
CS
D000328:Adult; D002648:Child; D003922:Diabetes Mellitus, Type 1 / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000628:therapy*; D005239:Fear; D005260:Female; D015438:Health Behavior; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010290:Parents / Q000523:psychology*; D020377:Self Efficacy; D013315:Stress, Psychological / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000523:psychology*