Maternal ADHD Symptoms, Personality, and Parenting Stress: Differences Between Mothers of Children With ADHD and Mothers of Comparison Children.

ObjectiveMothers raising a child with ADHD can experience high parenting stress. We evaluated if mothers' personality traits and own ADHD symptoms could also affect parenting stress.Method430 biological mothers from the Multimodal Treatment Study of Children with ADHD (MTA mothers) and 237 of a local normative comparison group (LNCG mothers) were evaluated at baseline. Interactions were tested between mothers' group and maternal personality/ADHD symptoms related to parenting stress.ResultsCompared to LNCG, MTA mothers had higher parenting stress, self-reported ADHD, neuroticism, and lower conscientiousness and agreeableness. When personality and ADHD were evaluated together, ADHD symptoms interacted with mothers' group: high maternal ADHD was positively associated with parenting stress for LNCG but not MTA mothers.ConclusionPersonality traits or ADHD characteristics do not appear operative for the high parenting stress of mothers of a child with ADHD. However, high maternal ADHD or low conscientiousness are associated with stress levels similar to raising a child with ADHD.