Children's opposition, marital and life satisfaction: the mediating role of parenting stress

• Published date: 01 October 2022
• Author: Carmit Matalon,Maria Nicoleta Turliuc,Cornelia Mairean
• Date: 01 October 2022
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/fare.12670

RESEARCH

Children’s opposition, marital and life satisfaction: the

mediating role of parenting stress

Carmit Matalon

1,2

|Maria Nicoleta Turliuc

1

|Cornelia Mairean

1

1

Department of Psychology, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Ias¸i, Ias¸i, Romania

2

School of Education, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel

Correspondence

Cornelia Mairean, Department of Psychology,

Alexandru Ioan Cuza University, Toma

Cozma Str. No. 3, 700554 Ias¸i, Romania.

Email: cornelia.mairean@uaic.ro

Abstract

Objective: The present study examines the association of

children’s oppositional behavior with marital and life satis-

faction by examining the mediating role of parenting

stress.

Background: Previous research indicates that parents of

children who exhibit behavioral problems often experience

parenting stress and lower marital and life satisfaction.

However, few studies have addressed the underlying mech-

anisms, and even fewer have focused on the effects of chil-

dren’s nonclinical oppositional behaviors while obtaining

data from both parents.

Method: Participants were 211 parent dyads (N=422) of

typically developing preschool children. Data on child’s

oppositional behavior, parenting stress, and marital and

life satisfaction were obtained from both parents simulta-

neously and analyzed using the common fate mediation

model.

Results: Parenting stress was found to fully mediate the

associations between children’s oppositional behavior and

marital and life satisfaction, whereas marital satisfaction

was found to partially mediate the association between

parenting stress and life satisfaction.

Conclusions: Children’s oppositional behaviors lead to

lower marital and life satisfaction through a mechanism of

parenting stress, and parenting stress negatively affects life

satisfaction, both directly and indirectly, through marital

satisfaction.

Implications: Therapeutic interventions for treating chil-

dren’s oppositional behaviors can usefully include a direct

Received: 19 February 2021Revised: 23 December 2021Accepted: 1 January 2022

DOI: 10.1111/fare.12670

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and

reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

© 2022 The Authors. Family Relations published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of National Council on Family Relations.

Family Relations. 2022;71:1785–1801. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/fare 1785

focus on reducing parenting stress and enhancing parents’

ability to cope with child-related stress as a couple, thus

improving parents’satisfaction with their marital relation-

ship and with life in general.

KEYWORDS

common fate model, life satisfaction, marital satisfaction, oppositional

behavior, parenting stress, preschool children

Parenting young children involves multiple daily demands, which can be energy-consuming and

stressful for many parents (Deater-Deckard, 2004). Rearing a child with behavioral problems is

particularly challenging because children’s behavioral problems, such as opposition, aggression,

and temper tantrums, are an additional source of stress, which can have an adverse effect on

parents and the whole family system (McQuillan & Bates, 2017). The potential negative impact

of rearing children with behavioral problems on the entire family is likely best explained by the

family systems theory (FST; Minuchin, 1974). In FST, the family is considered a dynamic and

adaptive system, composed of individual members and several subsystems that are

interdependent and have a mutual influence on each other (Cox & Paley, 2003). FST holds that

individual family members can only be fully understood within the context of their family sys-

tem, and understanding processes in the family system requires data from all individuals who

are part of the family system (Weeland et al., 2021).

Despite this, most research on the associations between children’s behavioral problems and

parenting stress, as well as other constructs in the family context, have primarily focused on

individual data reported by mothers, while few studies collected data from both parents

(Cabrera et al., 2018). However, in recent years, the importance of including fathers in such

studies has been increasingly acknowledged (Steenhoff et al., 2019), and interest in dyadic- and

family-level research has grown as well (Galovan et al., 2017). Dyadic-level research supports

the key assumption of FST, according to which direct and indirect processes within a family

system create unique dyadic-level contexts that may influence other dyadic-level phenomena.

Through these unique processes within the family system, individual dyad members may

become more similar to each other over time (Galovan et al., 2017). In the present study, we

aimed to address these gaps by obtaining data from both parents simultaneously, assessing the

intercorrelations and differences between mothers’and fathers’reports, and examining the

associations among variables and their explaining mechanisms at the dyadic level.

Furthermore, the relationships between family subsystems and members are considered

reciprocal, and research has established that parents and children influence each other through

bidirectional parent–child effects (Peltz et al., 2018). Despite the bidirectional nature of relation-

ships within families, most research has focused on parent effects (e.g., the effect of parents’

mental health, stress, and difficulties in functioning on their parenting and interactions with

their child, and the effect of different parenting styles and practices on child’s behavior). Less

research focus has been placed on child effects (e.g., the direct effect of children’s behavior on

parents’stress and well-being). In the present study, we focused on child effects and aimed to

explore the associations among children’s oppositional behavior, parenting stress, and marital

and life satisfaction by examining the direct and indirect relations between these constructs.

The considerable research literature on children’s behavioral problems and their associations

with parenting stress, as well as the literature on parents’satisfaction with aspects of their life,

has primarily targeted severe family circumstances or major life events that parents and families

face. Similarly, the majority of such studies relied on samples of parents of children with severe

behavioral problems (Postorino et al., 2019) and children who were diagnosed with behavioral

or emotional disorders (Manti et al., 2019), autism spectrum disorders (Lecavalier et al., 2006),

1786 FAMILY RELATIONS