Online assessment of problem-solving skills among fathers of young and school-age children with type 1 diabetes: Associations with parent and child outcomes

Type 1 diabetes (T1D) is a pediatric chronic illness that is associated with significant parenting stress due to its lifelong course, burdensome disease management, and life-threatening complications. Although mothers of children with T1D have been studied extensively in relation to parenting stress, coping, and diabetes outcomes, there is a need to examine similar variables among fathers. The aim of the present study was to examine if fathers' use of problem-solving skills was related to parenting stress and diabetes regimen adherence and if problem-solving skills moderated the associations between paternal involvement in diabetes care and parenting stress in a national online sample of 215 fathers of children with T1D. Self-report measures completed by fathers through Qualtrics included a demographic and disease-related questionnaire, the Social Problem-Solving Inventory-Revised; Parenting Stress Index-Fourth Edition, Short Form; Pediatric Inventory for Parents; Dads' Active Disease Support Scale; and Self-Care Inventory-Revised. Pearson correlations were computed to assess associations among study variables. Four separate multiple linear regression analyses were conducted to determine the interactive effects of problem-solving skills and paternal involvement on parenting stress. Analyses revealed a large positive correlation between problem-solving skills and general parenting stress (r= .63), and a large negative correlation between problem-solving skills and pediatric parenting stress (r= -.52). The interaction between problem-solving skills and father involvement accounted for a significant amount of variance in a general parenting stress subscale (p< .01) and pediatric parenting stress (p< .05). These results highlight the importance of problem-solving skills for father outcomes in the context of T1D while implicating the potential benefit of a problem-solving intervention for this population.