Relationship between mental health and parenting stress among intact families

The study was conducted to know the relationship between mental health and parenting stress among intact families in University of Agricultural Sciences, Dharwad in the year of 2013–2014. The sample comprised 60 intact (dual parent) families working in Dharwad campus. The self-structured questionnaire was used to collect personal information of the respondents. The mental health inventory developed by Jagdish and Srivastava (1983) and the parenting stress scale by Abidin (1995) were used to assess the stress related to life roles and life events experienced by parents. The results revealed that 63.6 per cent fathers and 40.4 per cent mothers from intact families had very poor mental health irrespective of age. No association was observed between the age of fathers and mothers from intact families with respect to mental health. None of the parents from intact families expressed very good, good and average levels of mental health. The correlation between occupation and mental health of both fathers and mothers was negative but not-significant. There was no significant difference and also no association found between the fathers and the mothers of intact families with respect to parenting stress. It was interesting to note that in case of fathers from intact families there was positive but non-significant relationship between mental health and parenting stress to the general health status. In case of mothers however there was positive but non-significant relationship. This indicates that increase in parenting stress increases the mental health problems.