Abstract
The purpose of this study is to compare (a) the degree of difficulty felt in daily care and (b) the degree of stress felt in parenting, between mothers of children with atopic dermatitis (AD) and mothers of children without AD. We also investigated how the degree of difficulty they felt in daily care, or the characteristics of AD such as its severity and complications, affected the degree of stress they felt in parenting. The questionnaire consisted of (a) subject characteristics (b) Japan Parenting Stress Index and (c) the original questionnaire about the difficulty they felt in parenting their children in daily life. 290 mothers with AD infants and 498 mothers with non AD infants aged 2-6 years old participated in this survey. Matched pairing was used to extract two homogeneous groups from which 242 subjects were selected. The results were as follows: 1) In comparing the total PSI scores of the two groups, there was no significant difference. 2) The mothers with AD infants felt more problems regarding their children than the mothers with non-AD infants. 3) The mothers whose children had more severe AD, experienced more problems with their children and felt that their children were generally in a bad mood. 4) There was no significant correlation between the presence of complications and the PSI score. 5) The PSI score showed significant correlation with the degree of difficulty they felt in parenting.
