The role of mindfulness, self-compassion and parental stress on the well-being of parents: The case of Bursa

In this study, the relationship among the well-being levels of the parents having normally developed children aged 6-14 years, mindfulness, self-compassion and parental stress has been analyzed. In addition to this, the impact of parental role, their age, education level, perception of their socioeconomic status and employment status on well-being levels of the parents has been studied. 785 parents (449 mothers, 336 fathers) having normally developed children aged 6-14 years living in the Bursa province in the spring semester of 2020-2021 educational year comprise the working group of the study. With the aim of obtaining the data for the study, PERMA Well-Being Scale, Mindful Attention and Awareness Scale, Self-Compassion Scale and Parent Stress Scale have been applied. Besides, so as to define the sociodemographic qualities of the parents, Personal Information Form has been developed by the researcher. The data have been analyzed with the help of IBM SPSS 26 programme. Prior to the analyses, one-way and multi-directional extreme values and normality assumptions have been studied. The normality of the scores obtained from the scales has been assessed by analyzing the histogram graphics along with the skewness and kurtosis coefficients of the collected data. Additionally, whether it meets the assumptions of multiple regression analysis has been focused on. In terms of studying analyses, t-test for independent groups as for parental role and employment status and one-way ANOVA for the age, educational status and perceived socio-economic status have been used. In order to figure out whether mindfulness, self-compassion and parental stress predict the well-being and reveal the predictive power of each variable, multiple regression and stepwise regression analyses have been carried out. According to the findings of the study, while the well-being levels of the parents significantly vary as for their age and perception of their socio-economic status, they do not significantly vary as for the parental role (maternal-paternal), education level and employment status. While mindfulness and self-compassion significantly and positively predict the well-being levels of the parents, parental stress significantly and negatively predict the well-being levels of the parents. Furthermore, it has been concluded that mindfulness is the most powerful independent variable predicting the well-being levels of the parents, followed by the two other independent variables, self-compassion and parental stress, respectively.