Strict parenting may lead to long lasting mental health problems: Study
London, April 4: Parents, who frequently exercise harsh discipline with young children, are putting their kids at significantly greater risk of developing lasting mental health problems.
According to the research and study, over 7,500 Irish children found that children exposed to 'hostile' parenting at age three were 1.5 times likelier than their peers to have mental health symptoms which qualified as 'high risk' by age nine.
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Notably, hostile parenting involves frequent harsh treatment and discipline and can be physical or psychological. It may, for example, involve shouting at children regularly, routine physical punishment, isolating children when they misbehave, damaging their self-esteem, or punishing children unpredictably depending on the parent's mood.
The researchers charted children's mental health symptoms at ages three, five and nine. They studied both internalising mental health symptoms (such as anxiety and social withdrawal) and externalising symptoms (such as impulsive and aggressive behaviour, and hyperactivity).
About 10% of the children were found to be in a high-risk band for poor mental health. Children who experienced hostile parenting were much more likely to fall into this group.
The researchers also used data from 7,507 participants in the 'Growing up in Ireland' longitudinal study of children and young people. The researches captured mental health data of participants using a standard assessment tool called the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire. Each child was given a composite score out of 10 for their externalising and internalising symptoms at ages three, five and nine.
A second standard assessment was used to measure the parenting style children experienced at age three. Parents were profiled based on how far they inclined towards each of three styles: warm parenting (supportive and attentive to their child's needs); consistent (setting clear expectations and rules); and hostile.
The researchers found that, based on the trajectories along which their mental health symptoms developed between ages three and nine, the children fell into three broad categories. Most (83.5%) were low risk, with low internalising and externalising symptom scores at age three which then fell or remained stable. A few (6.43%) were mild risk, with high initial scores that decreased over time, but remained higher than the first group. The remaining 10.07% were high risk, with high initial scores that increased by age nine.
Hostile parenting raised a child's chances of being in the high-risk category by 1.5 times, and the mild-risk category by 1.6 times, by age nine. Consistent parenting was found to have a limited protective role, but only against children falling into the 'mild-risk' category. To the researchers' surprise, however, warm parenting did not increase the likelihood of children being in the low-risk group, possibly due to the influence of other factors on mental health outcomes.
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Previous research has highlighted the importance of these other factors, many of which the new study also confirmed. Girls, for example, were more likely to be in the high-risk category than boys; children with single parents were 1.4 times more likely to be high-risk, and those from wealthier backgrounds were less likely to exhibit worrying mental health symptoms by middle childhood.
- ANI
