An investigation of the mediator role of dyadic coping in relation between parenting stress and marital quality

The aim of this study is to investigate of the mediator role of dyadic coping in relations between parenting stress and marital quality. The study group consisted of individuals who have children and are married and 803 individuals were included in the analyzes. External variable of the study is parenting stress; mediator variables are emotion-problem focused supportive coping, negative coping, emotion-problem focused common coping which are subscales of dyadic coping with stress. Three models have been created in direction with the purpose of the study, three models were formed. In the first model, the perception of the individuals towards self-perception in order to dyadic coping between the parenting stress and the marital quality was tested. In the second model, the perception towards the partner and in the third model, the perception of common dyadic coping was tested. Parent Stress Scale was used to determine the level of parenting stress in the study, Dyadic Coping Inventory adapted to Turkish within the scope of the research was used to measure the level of dyadic coping and Partnership Questionnaire adapted to Turkish within the scope of the research was used to measure the level of marital quality. SPSS 20 and AMOS 23 software has been used for statistical analyses of research data. When the results were examined, parenting stress, directly effects emotional and problem-focused supportive dyadic coping, emotional and problem-focused common dyadic coping and marital quality in the negative direction; directly effects negative dyadic coping in the positive direction. When the direct relationships between the sub-dimensions of dyadic coping with stress and the marital quality are examined, it has been found that emotion focused support, problem focused support, and negative coping have no direct effect on marital quality in the self-perception and perception models of the partner. Considering that some paths in the model may not be meaningful contribution to the model, the effects of roads without direct effects has ignored by equalizing zero and the analysis repeated after each operation. As a result, in the self-perception of the individual and the perception of the partner model the emotion focused support directly affected the quality of marriage. In the common model, emotional and problem focused common coping directly affected the quality of marriage. When findings related to indirect effects were examined, in the perception of self and in the perception of the partner models, there were partial mediations of emotion focused support in the relation between parental stress and marital quality. It was also found that the relation between parenting stress and marital quality is partially mediated by emotion-focused and problem-focused common dyadic coping, according to the perception that individual's common dyadic coping with their partners. The findings were discussed in the context of the relevant literature and some suggestions were made to the researchers and practitioners.