Harmonious and Obsessive Passion for Child-Rearing Show Opposite Associations with Preschoolers’ Quality of Life: A Cross-Sectional Study of Japanese Parents

Parental well-being is consistently associated with children’s development, but how qualitatively different forms of parental engagement relate to children’s well-being remains poorly understood. Drawing on the Dualistic Model of Passion, this cross-sectional study examined how harmonious and obsessive passion for child-rearing are associated with parental well-being and with parent-reported quality of life (QOL) of preschool children. A total of 1000 Japanese parents (519 mothers, 481 fathers) of preschool children aged 3–6 years completed an online survey measuring parental well-being (WHO-5), passion for child-rearing (an adapted Passion Scale), and children’s QOL (parent-proxy Kiddy-KINDL-R). A latent-variable model was estimated; all estimates are interpreted as associations, and no mediation was tested. Parental well-being was positively associated with both harmonious (β = 0.467) and obsessive passion (β = 0.276). The two forms were associated with parent-reported QOL in opposite directions, harmonious passion positively (β = 0.608) and obsessive passion negatively (β = −0.424), and an equality-constrained comparison confirmed that the coefficients differed (Δχ2(1) = 314.63). The pattern held across seven robustness analyses. Common-informant variance cannot be excluded. The distinction may provide a useful framework for future research and for practitioner training in early childhood education and care.