Parents' Daily Hassles Stress and Child Avoidant Coping during Deployment: A Structural Equation Nonrecursive Model to Investigate the Non-deployed Parent-Child Dyad In National Guard Families

Abstract

Deployment is an event that military spouses and children cannot control. Repeated and lengthy deployments are associated with higher stress. Intense or prolonged stress is associated with maladaptive coping and physical, emotional, and relationship problems. Extant studies do not explain how parent stress and child avoidant coping do or do not impact one another. This dissertation's structural equation model tested the hypothesis that parent stress and child avoidant coping have a bidirectional relationship. Parent age, parent education, parent satisfaction with unit support, months of deployment were hypothesized to predict parent stress. Child age and child social support were hypothesized to predict child avoidant coping. The results suggest that parent stress and child avoidant coping do have a bidirectional relationship. The length of deployment did predict parent stress. Child age and child's social support predicted child avoidant coping. Finding that parent stress and child avoidant coping have a bi-directional relationship has implications for social work practice. Interventions that focus on the interaction of parent stress and child avoidant coping may be more efficacious than interventions that focus on parent stress or child avoidant coping independently. Further research should be done to investigate that supposition.