Objectives: In modern society, which is said to lack human relationships, an individual's personal ability to build relationships has gained great importance. The purpose of this study was to define the relationship between the parental feelings of parents of children aged 3 years and a personal trust (PT) scale developed by the author. We also clarified the differences between fathers and mothers with regard to PT.
Methods: The study sample comprised 329 parents (134 fathers, 195 mothers) of children who underwent the health examination for children aged 3 years in 2008 in City A, Japan. We distributed questionnaire forms to the participants before the examination and collected the completed forms on the day of the health examination. The PT scale consists of 3 subscales: (1) strategic trust for building bonds (ST), (2) universal trust toward the general public (UT), and (3) trust toward specific persons (TS). First, subscale scores were summed up for fathers and mothers. Next, confounding factors were investigated by comparing the median subscale scores obtained for different demographic groups. Next, we performed logistic regression analysis to investigate the influence of PT, which was evaluated using the 3 subscales, on parental feelings.
Results: We identified the confounding factors by comparing the median scores of each subscale for different demographic groups. A group of parents whose birthplace was City A had a high ST score. Next, compared to unemployed mothers, working mothers had higher ST and TS scores. Furthermore, mothers of male children had higher ST scores than those of female children. We performed multivariate logistic regression analysis to investigate the psychological parental variables affected by PT calculated using each of the subscales. The results indicated the ST and TS scores affects parental feelings of fathers. However, the UT scores had no effect on parental feelings of fathers. In the case of mothers, the ST, TS, and UT scores affects parental feelings but the ST scores had no effect on parental feelings after adjusting for confounding factors.
Conclusion: The PT scale reflected the socializing patterns of parents with various communities. We confirmed that PT promoted parental happiness and buffered parenting-related stress. However, there was a difference between the characteristics of fathers and mothers in relationships between parental feelinfs and PT. For example, in the case of fathers, there was no significant relationship between parental feelings and UT.