Do Green Spaces Matter? the Associations between Parenting Stress, Child Mental Health Problems and Green Spaces

Parenting stress is among the contextual factors that have been subject to vigorous research in terms of its effect on parenting behaviors and on child development. There is convincing evidence linking parenting stress related to reports of child behavioral and emotional problems, adjustment difficulties, and internalizing or externalizing problems (Abidin, 1995, ; Berllinger, 1994; Haskett et al., 2006; Bayer et al., 2006; Costa et al., 2006; Ashfort et al., 2008; Crnic et al., 2005, ). On the other hand, green spaces are associated with better child mental health (Strife et al., 2009; Louv, 2005). The purpose of this study was to examine the associations between parenting stress, children mental health and green spaces. Methods. Data were obtained from Kaunas cohort study (Kaunas KANC, Lithuania). Distance to natural water pond and green spaces was based on spatial land cover data sets for Kaunas city which were obtained from the municipality and were processed using ArcGIS 10 software. 645 women filled in Simplified version of Parenting Stress index – short form (S – PSI/SF, Abidin, 1995; Yeh et al., 2001), Strength and Difficulties Questionnaire Lithuanian version (SDQ, Gintilienė et al., 2004). We used regression analysis to examine a model of these associations. Findings and Results. The linear regression analysis showed that parenting stress was significantly predicted by the distance to natural water pond, child mental health problems, and child physical health. The best model of associations was when all predictors were included. However, the distance to green spaces was not a significant predictor. Conclusions and recommendations. We conclude that not only child mental health problems or physical health matter in predicting parenting stress, but the distance to natural water pond such as river is important factor too. Our recommendation is in other research to take a deeper look in these associations.