Parental mental health problems. The NSAF data included a scale measuring parental emotional distress that has good psychometric properties (Ehrle and Moore, 1999). The five items that were summed and used in creating the scale asked for example, how often in the past month the parent (a) had been a very nervous person, (b) felt downhearted and blue, and (c) felt so down in the dumps that nothing could cheer him/her up. The response categories included all of the time (1) to none of the time (4). Responses were totaled, creating a score ranging from 5 to 20. The scale scores were reverse-coded so that a higher score was indicative of increased parental mental health problems.
Good quality of parenting. This scale was available in the NSAF data and has good psychometric properties (Ehrle and Moore, 1999). It was created by summing responses to four items, for example: how often in the past month the parent felt (a) the child was much harder to care for than most; (b) he or she was giving up more of his/her life to meet the child