Parenting as it’s Lived: Moment-to-Moment Stressors, Parental Self-Efficacy, and Autonomy Support Among Refugee Parents

• In Event: Poster Session 02
  In Poster Session: PS 02 Topic - Family Context & Processes

Abstract

Abstract:
Parental self-efficacy typically dips when children transition into adolescence (Glatz & Buchanan, 2015). Refugee parents tend to experience an additional dip when they resettle in a new country and struggle with post-migration stressors (Ali, 2008; Boruszak-Kiziukiewicz & Kmita, 2020; El-Khani, 2016). This means that refugee parents of adolescent children might be particularly vulnerable to reductions in parental self-efficacy. This may hamper parents’ confidence in their parenting skills and make it difficult for them to grant adolescent children the autonomy they desire and need. In this study [preregistered but blinded] we aimed to advance our understanding of this process by examining, in daily life, how post-migration stress contributes to less autonomy supportive parenting through compromised feelings of parental self-efficacy. We also tested the viability of a brief intervention strengthening parental self-efficacy and investigated its effects on the hardiness of parental self-efficacy.
Methods:
We used experience sampling method where parents reported on momentary questionnaires, 10 times per day, at quasi-random times, for 15 days. Participants were asked to report experiences of post-migration stress, feelings of parental self-efficacy, and how much autonomy they granted their children. Our sample included 55 refugee parents (72% Syrian) in the Netherlands. First, we fit a dynamic structural equation model (DSEM; Hamaker, Asparouhouv, Brose, Schmiedek, & Muthen, 2018) to test whether post-migration stress predicts reductions in parental autonomy support at subsequent time-points, and whether parental self-efficacy explains this link. Second, we used a within-subject experimental design with a brief intervention where participants were randomized to a multiple baseline of 6, 7, or 8 days. We tested whether a brief intervention using tailored feedback strengthens parental self-efficacy and renders it less contingent upon post-migration stress.
Results:
When parents experienced more post-migration stress, they indeed granted their children less autonomy later that day. This process was partly explained by parents feeling less efficacious after experiencing post-migration stress. Findings held after controlling for parents’ post-traumatic stress symptoms, but not in a more stringent test controlling for all possible temporal and lagged associations. In addition, the brief intervention strengthened parental self-efficacy and rendered it less contingent upon post-migration stress. Our results highlight the importance of post-migration stress for parenting practices, above and beyond symptoms of war-trauma, in the lives of refugee families.

Authors

• Hend Eltanamly, Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen
  Presenting Author

• Patty Leijten, University of Amsterdam
  Non-Presenting Author

• Eeske Van Roekel, Tilburg University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Benedicte Mouton, University of Brussels (ULB)
  Non-Presenting Author

• Michael Pluess, Queen Mary University of London
  Non-Presenting Author

• Geertjan Overbeek, University of Amsterdam
  Non-Presenting Author