Parental stress entails parents’ negative feelings towards themselves and their children, and is often the result of a mismatch between the demands and resources of fulfilling the parental role. Parents' self-concept (i.e., including both content and structure) can be a personal resource and is a non-negligible factor in parental stress that requires further exploration. As the content of self-concept, personality dimensions (e.g., Big-Five) have been linked to parental stress by affecting people’s selection, appraisal, and coping styles of stressful events. However, a systematic analysis is still needed as effect sizes differ across studies. As for the structure of self-concept, despite being considered a protective factor against stressors by making people more able to cope with negative appraisals, no study has directly investigated the relationship between self-concept clarity and parental stress. Therefore, to supplement the gaps mentioned above, this project examines how parents’ self-concept (both the content and the structure) is related to parental stress. Firstly, a meta-analysis will be applied to examine the magnitude of the relationship between the content of self-concept (i.e., Big-Five personality) and parental stress, as well as moderators that could dampen or strengthen this association. The second and third studies will examine the role of both the content and structure of self-concept in predicting parental stress using the longitudinal multigenerational RADAR dataset. In the fourth study, a qualitative study will be conducted to explore the role self-concept plays in relieving parental stress.

• prof. dr. Susan Branje
• Wenxuan Hao
• dr. M.H. (Monika) Donker