Effectiveness of Parental Skills Training on Worry, Anxiety and Self-Efficacy Beliefs of Single-Child and Multi-Child Parents

Each family utilizes specific methods for personal and social education of their children. These methods that are called “Parenting style” are affected by various factors such as biological، cultural، social، political، and economic factors. The present study intends to investigate the effectiveness of parental skills training on worry، anxiety and self-efficacy beliefs of single-child and multi-child parents. In this experimental study، two private girls'' school located in the city of Karaj، were randomly selected as the control and experimental groups. Parents of experimental group’s students (54 couples) with a voluntary assignment participated in 8 training sessions. Data were obtained by General Self-efficacy Beliefs Questionnaire، Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI)، Penn State Worry Questionnaire (PSWQ) which were then analyzed by t-test and ANOVA. Results showed that there was not any significant difference in the pretest between single-child and multi-child parents. Regarding control and experimental groups، a significant difference has been detected between the pretest and posttest between two groups. Multifactor ANOVA test results also showed that the effect of parental skills training is significant on fear، anxiety and self-efficacy. But the number of children does not have any significant effect on the fear، anxiety and self-efficacy. Findings emphasize the necessity and importance of parental skills training to facilitate children nurture، decrease stress and worry resulting from parenting responsibility.