2020 Volume 28 Issue 1 Pages 15-24
Objective: This study aimed to focus on mothers' feelings of irritation and clarify factors affecting their inappropriate coping behaviors when their children exhibit negative emotions such as crying or getting fussy.
Methods: We conducted an anonymous self-administered questionnaire survey from April to July 2017 among mothers with children aged 1 to 6 years who were enrolled in one of three facilities: a suburban kindergarten, an urban kindergarten, and an urban nursery school. We excluded invalid replies from the 687 mothers (recovery rate: 57.3%) and analyzed the 444 mothers. The difficulty in raising children, mother's cognitive styles, help-seeking preferences, cognitions of persecution, and feelings of irritation were scored and analyzed by multiple regression analysis.
Results: Mothers' feelings of irritation and children's ages were the factors that directly influenced mothers' inappropriate coping behaviors against negative emotional expressions of their children. Factors affecting their feelings of irritation were the difficulty in raising children and perfectionism. In particular, cognitions of persecution and perfectionism tended to increase feelings of irritation and lead to inappropriate coping behaviors.
Conclusions: Feelings of irritation existed between mothers' cognitive factors and their inappropriate coping behaviors. Also indicated was that feelings of irritation heightened by cognitions of persecution and cognitive style of perfectionism tended to lead to inappropriate coping behaviors. It is important to consider the intervention methods based on cognitive traits so that mothers can control their feelings of irritation.
