Marital Conflict, Parenting Stress, and Parent-Child Relationships: A Longitudinal Dyadic Survey Study With a Common Fate Mixed Model

As a shared psychological environment within families, spouses’ perceptions of marital conflict can significantly influence parenting stress and parent-child relationships. However, existing research has paid insufficient attention to the associations among these three factors and their underlying mechanisms. This study used cluster sampling to recruit 399 mother-father dyads from Shanghai, China, and collected data through electronic questionnaires, including the Dyadic Adjustment Scale, the Parenting Stress Index-Short Form, and the Parent-Child Relationship Scale. Based on the Common Fate Mixed Model, this study examined whether spouses’ perceptions of shared marital conflict were correlated and compared their differential responses in parenting stress and parent-child relationships to identify gender-specific patterns. The results indicated that maternal parenting stress partially mediated the relationship between shared marital conflict and mother-child conflict and fully mediated the relationship between shared marital conflict and mother-child closeness. Paternal parenting stress fully mediated the relationship between shared marital conflict and father-child conflict, and partially mediated the relationship between shared marital conflict and father-child closeness. This study demonstrates how shared marital stress influences mothers’ and fathers’ stress appraisals and subsequent parenting behaviors within the same family system, thereby strengthening the explanatory power of the Family Stress ABC-X model. Furthermore, by illustrating the distinct parenting involvement and gatekeeping behaviors exhibited by mothers and fathers under marital conflict, this study extends the applicability of Gatekeeping Theory and provides culturally contextualized evidence for understanding gender-differentiated parent-child relationship pathways in Chinese families.