Effects of Child-Parent Relationship Therapy on Maternal Parenting Stress and Parental Acceptance of Primary School Children

The main focus of this study was on examining the effects of child-parent relationship therapy (CPRT) on maternal parenting stress and parental acceptance of primary school children. This quasi-experimental research had a pretest-posttest control group design with a follow-up assessment. The statistical population of the study consisted of all mothers having primary school going children in Ahvaz (District 2) in 2016. The sample comprised 30 mothers who were randomly selected from among those who had expressed their willingness to voluntarily take part in the study. The drawn sample was assigned to experimental (N=15) and control (N=15) groups by random. The instruments included Parenting Stress Index/Short Form (Abidin, 1999) and Parental Acceptance-Rejection Questionnaire (mother form). The experimental group received 10 sessions of child-parent relationship therapy (CPRT) based on Landreth and Bratton model; however, no intervention was implemented for the control group. The results of MANCOVA in the posttest phase showed that child-parent relationship therapy (CPRT) significantly increased parental acceptance of children and reduced parenting stress in the experimental group (p<0.05). In addition, the intervention effects were sustained over the one-month follow-up period (p<0.05). Findings were indicative of the fact that child-parent relationship therapy was an effective method for reducing parenting stress and increasing parental acceptance of children.