J Abnorm Child Psychol (2007) 35:251–263 DOI 10.1007/s10802-006-9082-3 ORIGINAL PAPER Predicting Change in Parenting Stress Across Early Childhood: Child and Maternal Factors Amanda P. Williford · Susan D. Calkins · Susan P. Keane Published online: 21 December 2006 C  Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2006 Abstract This study examined maternal parenting stress in a sample of 430 boys and girls including those at risk for externalizing behavior problems. Children and their moth- ers were assessed when the children were ages 2, 4, and 5. Hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) was used to examine stability of parenting stress across early childhood and to ex- amine child and maternal factors predicting parenting stress at age 2 and changes in parenting stress across time. Results indicated that single parenthood, maternal psychopathology, child anger proneness, and child emotion dysregulation pre- dicted 2-year parenting stress. Child externalizing behaviors predicted initial status and changes across time in parenting stress. Stability of parenting stress was dependent upon child externalizing problems, as well as interactions between child externalizing problems and gender, and child externalizing problems and emotion regulation. Results are discussed in the context of mechanisms by which parenting stress may influence the development of child externalizing behaviors. Keywords Parenting stress . Externalizing behavior . Emotion regulation . Hierarchical linear modeling . Early childhood The demands of parenting a young child create significant stress for almost all parents at one time or another. The as- sessment of parenting stress varies from examining every day hassles occurring within the normative parenting con- text (Crnic & Greenberg, 1990) to assessing more signifi- cant distress within the parent-child system (Abidin, 1990). Abidin (1992, 1995) proposed that parenting stress is created A. P. Williford () · S. D. Calkins () · S. P. Keane University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 296 Eberhart Building, Greensboro, NC 27402-6164 USA e-mail: apwillif@uncg.edu, sdcalkin@uncg.edu by a mismatch between the perceived demands of parenting and the resources available to meet those demands (Abidin, 1995) and can be defined as the negative mental response attributed to the self and/or the child created by “a series of appraisals made by each parent in the context of his or her level of commitment to the parent role” (Abidin, 1992, p. 410). Regardless of how parenting stress is conceptualized, greater stress typically indicates poorer outcomes in both the child and parent (usually maternal) domains (Crnic & Low, 2002). Increased parenting stress has been repeatedly iden- tified as a risk factor for higher levels of child disruptive be- havior problems (Barry, Dunlap, Cotten, Lockman, & Wells, 2005; Podolski & Nigg, 2001; Qi & Kaiser, 2003) as well as maladaptive parenting practices (Calkins, Hungerford, & Dedmon, 2004; see Kazdin & Whitley, 2003 for a review). Although research identifying parenting stress as a risk fac- tor for maladaptive parenting and negative child outcome is prevalent, the mechanisms by which parenting stress impacts child outcome is still unclear (Deater-Deckard, 2005). In comparison to studies examining parenting stress as a predictor of outcome, fewer studies have focused on un- derstanding which factors influence parenting stress and its stability over time (Chang et al., 2004). Clearly, a better un- derstanding of stability and change of parenting stress over the course of early childhood would have important implica- tions not only for understanding the development of behavior problems but also for the design of effective early preven- tive and intervention programs. Thus, the purpose of this study was to examine mother’s parenting stress over time in a sample of children that included those at-risk for devel- oping externalizing behavior problems during the preschool period in order to begin to understand causal mechanisms in parenting stress (Chang et al., 2004; Kazdin & Whitley, 2003). Springer