Safety behaviors of mothers of young children: Impact of cognitive, stress and background factors

We explore the relative contribution of cognitive, stress, and background variables as factors that explain safety behaviors of parents of young children. The data set was a probability sample of mothers of young children (N = 1247). The focus of survey questions was predominantly home, safety, a setting where young children are at highest risk for injury. We tested hypotheses using structural equations models. Our analyses indicate that stress and coping are important mediating factors between cognitive factors of perceptions of risk and safety behaviors practiced by parents of young children. Use of both cognitive and situational variables may be particularly important in understanding preventive health behaviors of mothers with young children. We also explore differences in models between African-American and white parents. We view this research as representing the continued development of health behavior research, extended to include parents and their children, since most health behavior research has not examined parental health behavior linked to protection of young children.