Lea Ankri, FCLC '26

Major: Psychology (pre-health track)

Bio: Lea joined the PERL lab in the summer of 2024. She is interested in researching mental health disorders that can be associated with childhood and parental dynamics. She also aspires to work in the medical field with a focus on women’s health proceeding her time at Fordham.

Title of Research: Parental Age and Parental Distress Tolerance

Mentors: Amy Roy and Robert Garvey, M.S. (as authors)

Abstract: Evidence suggests that that with increasing age parents often experience higher role enjoyment and better emotional processing compared to that of younger parents during distressing situations (Ragozin et al., 1982). Distress tolerance impacts kids, through the parent’s maladaptive behaviors and reflective functioning, regarding their mental state and attachment styles. The interaction between distress tolerance and reflective functioning could serve as a prediction for parenting behaviors which in turn influences parenting practices imposed on their children. Therefore the current study aims to examine associations between parental age and parental distress tolerance specifically in a sample of parents of young children. Participants in this study were 89 parents (43 fathers, 46 mothers) who responded online to a set of questionnaires about parenting. They completed several measures including those used in this study: coping with children’s negative emotions scale, distress tolerance scale, parent distress tolerance scale, interpersonal reactivity index, and parental reflective functioning questionnaire. Correlation analyses were used to examine associations with parental age. Initial findings showed correlations between P-DTS and types of parental behavior including a negative correlation with non-supportive parenting and not significant predictor of supportive parenting during distressing circumstances. Additional analyses will examine differences in these associations between mothers and fathers.