Marital satisfaction and parent-reported emotional competence in Chinese preschoolers: serial indirect associations through mindful parenting and parental involvement

Guided by Belsky’s parenting process model, this pooled cross-sectional study examined a theory-ordered pattern of statistical associations linking marital satisfaction, mindful parenting, parental involvement, and parent-reported emotional competence. Participants were 5,303 married biological parents of kindergarten children in Hubei Province, China, most of whom were mothers. A latent-variable structural equation model adjusted for data-collection batch and relevant demographic characteristics; classroom-cluster-robust re-estimation was used to evaluate the nested recruitment structure.

Marital satisfaction was positively associated with mindful parenting and parental involvement; mindful parenting and parental involvement were each positively associated with parent-reported emotional competence. The theory-ordered statistical indirect association through the serially specified parenting constructs was positive (β = 0.038, cluster-robust 95% CI [0.029, 0.046]), whereas the adjusted direct association between marital satisfaction and parent-reported emotional competence was nonsignificant. Covariance-equivalent directional specifications fit identically, indicating that temporal and causal ordering could not be established.

Because all constructs were reported by the same parent at one time point, the findings describe theory-consistent statistical associations and do not show that one parenting process preceded another, transmitted an effect, or would improve the child outcome if changed. Longitudinal and multi-informant research is needed. This study received no external funding.

School of Education, Central China Normal University, Wuhan, 430079, China School of Computer Science and Information Technology, Adelaide University, Adelaide, SA, 5005, Australia School of Psychology, Central China Normal University, Wuhan, 430079, China College of Educational Science, Xinjiang Normal University, Urumqi, 830017, China The authors declare no competing interests. This study protocol was reviewed and approved by the Ethics Committee of Central China Normal University (Approval Code: CCNU-IRB-202409060b, Approval Date: September 6, 2024). Both Batch A and Batch B were collected under this approved study protocol, and the same ethics approval covered recruitment at all 15 participating kindergartens.

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. This article does not contain any studies with animals performed by any of the authors. Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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