Development of an online intervention to promote parents’ subjective well-being

Abstract

Subjective well-being is a concept used in Psychology to refer to happiness. The experience of parenting can affect the subjective well-being of mothers and fathers, reducing their life satisfaction. Parental subjective well-being is associated with parenting practices and styles, and child developmental outcomes. The current dissertation aimed to develop an online intervention to promote the subjective well-being of mothers and fathers of children aged 3 to 6 years old. This objective was achieved by three complementary studies, which resulted in three articles. Study 1 presents a theoretical model of the causal relationships between parental subjective well-being, parenting practices, parenting styles and child social-emotional competence. This model was developed in three stages. First, it presented the dimensions and main predictors of each studied concept. Second, it discussed empirical evidence of the reciprocal relations between the four constructs. Third, it was proposed a theoretical model of the causal relationships between these variables. According to this theoretical model, parents’ subjective well-being has bidirectional causal relationships with parenting practices and styles, and with children’s social-emotional competence. Parents’ subjective well-being affects children’s social-emotional competence directly and indirectly, via parenting practices, whose impact is moderated by parenting styles. Study 2 refers to an integrative review on intervention strategies used to promote subjective well-being among parents of 0 to 11-year-old children. The search was conducted in the Web of Science, Scopus, PsycINFO, PubMed, and LILACS databases, and included papers written in English, Spanish, or Portuguese. Two judges collected and analyzed data independently, using the Rayyan web application. Eleven papers met the inclusion criteria and described 21 strategies, that were classified as behavioral, cognitive, or emotional. The interventions influencing only the affective dimension of parental subjective well-being included only behavioral and cognitive strategies. On the other hand, the interventions that enhanced both affective and cognitive dimensions included strategies addressing emotional variables besides behavioral and cognitive variables. Study 3 describes process of developing an online intervention to promote the subjective well-being of poorly educated parents of children aged 3 to 6, using the Intervention Mapping approach. This protocol comprises six stages, and the first four stages were conducted in Study 3. The first stage performed an integrative review (Study 2), three focus groups with parents, and an interview with a community health agent to identify risk and protection factors of parents’ subjective well-being. The results provided support to design the logic model of the problem. In the following three stages, it was developed a logic model of change and a matrix of objectives, selected the theoretical models and practical strategies, and described the components and materials of the Parental Well-being Program (PWP) [Bem-Estar Subjetivo Parental (BESP), in Portuguese]. This is a 10-week online program that includes video-based self-administered activities and videoconferences held by a psychologist once a week. The PWP can affect parents’ subjective well-being direct and indirectly, via parenting practices and styles, and child developmental outcomes. Likewise, the PWP can improve child developmental outcomes indirectly, via parents’ subjective well-being and parenting practices and styles.