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Objective Caregivers of children with a chronic illness often experience stress that can impact their child's health and influence the parent-child relationship dynamic through changes in communication patterns. Within a pediatric asthma sample, we examined the associations between medical factors and caregiver stress on parent-child communication patterns and youth quality of life (QOL).Methods Youth with asthma (n = 70; Mage=13.99; 43% female) and their caregivers (94% female; 46% White) were recruited from a pediatric pulmonary clinic. Hierarchical regression models examined the unique contributions of medical factors and caregiver stress (PIP) on caregiver-child communication patterns (RFCP; openness vs. conforming to family ideals) and youth QOL (PAQLQ).Results On a scale of 42-210, in which higher scores indicate greater frequency or difficulty of problems contributing to caregiver stress, caregivers reported an average frequency score of 83.91 (SD = 30.226) and an average difficulty score of 79.00 (SD = 32.767). More emergency room visits in the past 12 months (B=.327, p=.006) was related to greater endorsement of parent-child communication conformity orientation, explaining 21.1% of variance, F(3,61)=5.45, p=.002; caregiving stress was only associated at the bivariate level. Higher caregiving stress difficulty (B=-.389, p=.001) was related to lower youth QOL, explaining 17.0% of variance, F(2,64)=6.55, p=.003.Conclusions Caregivers of youth with asthma reported low-moderate caregiving stress in both frequency and difficulty of problems faced. Nevertheless, caregiving stress difficulty was a predictor of their child's QOL above and beyond medical factors. Healthcare providers should screen for caregiving stress and continue to monitor caregiver well-being throughout the illness trajectory.
Hill et al. (Sat,) studied this question.