Graduation Year
2025
Date of Submission
12-2025
Document Type
Open Access Senior Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts
Department
Psychology
Reader 1
Rachel Fenning
Rights Information
2025 Elliot T Hess
Abstract
Parents of autistic preschoolers often report high levels of stress that spill over into daily parenting. Mindfulness is promoted in clinical settings as a protective factor, yet its real-world role for stressed caregivers remains unclear. We used baseline data from 112 caregivers of autistic preschoolers participating in a stress-reduction clinical trial to examine whether trait mindfulness alters the link between parenting stress and parenting behavior. Parents reported on their own parenting stress, trait mindfulness, and parenting behavior as part of a broader pre-intervention assessment. Moderation effects were analyzed using hierarchical regression, with follow-up analysis of simple slopes and regions of significance. Interestingly, parenting stress was associated with greater self-reported negative parenting, but only among caregivers high in trait mindfulness. Specifically, high trait mindfulness was associated with less negative parenting at lower levels of parenting stress, but not at very high levels of stress. No significant effects emerged for positive parenting. These findings suggest that, after a child’s autism diagnosis, high trait mindfulness may be helpful in the context of lower levels of parenting stress, but even “more mindful” parents may exhibit negative parenting at very high levels of stress. For clinicians, this underscores the importance of pairing mindfulness-based approaches with explicit work on acceptance, self-compassion, and concrete parenting skills, rather than assuming trait mindfulness alone will dampen stress-related risk. High trait-mindful parents may also be more aware of their own behaviors and thus better reporters of harsh or inconsistent parenting. The findings suggest a need for greater attention to measurement and implications of trait mindfulness in highly stressed caregiver populations.
Recommended Citation
Hess, Elliot, "Trait Mindfulness and Parenting Stress: Predicting Parenting Behavior in Families of Autistic Preschoolers" (2025). CMC Senior Theses. 4287.
https://scholarship.claremont.edu/cmc_theses/4287
