The Features of Parental Stress in Mothers with Different Styles of Attachment to Close People

L.V. Petranovskaya. The Features of Parental Stress in Mothers with Different Styles of Attachment to Close People. Abstract. The work explores the relationship of parental stress, understood as stress from the parental role, and the characteristics of attachment to loved ones. The sample was 3879 Russian-speaking mothers, both married and single, having from 1 to 9 children. A direct correlation of the level of parental stress was shown both with anxiety and with avoidance of attachment to close people. Moreover, parental stress in mothers with different styles of affection has a different structure. For mothers with high level of anxiety, greater contribution to parental stress is made by the requirements of the parental role, and for mothers with high level of avoidance, we observed reduced ability to enjoy the parental role. In the second part of the study, using the analysis of semi-structured interviews the characteristics of the subjective experience of parental stress by mothers with different attachment styles were described. It has been shown that these features are associated with patterns characteristic of each of the attachment styles. In particular, the characteristics of attachment are associated with different opportunities to get support from loved ones in experiencing parental stress. Keywords. Parental stress, parental role, attachment style, attachment characteristics.