Studies on the impact of work-family dynamics on both parenting and children's outcomes are scarce. The present study addressed this gap by exploring how parents' negative (conflicting) and positive (enriching) experiencing of work and family roles related to children's internalizing and externalizing problem behaviors through its association with the quality of parent-child relationships. A sample of 317 dual-earner couples with preschool children was used to conduct a dyadic analysis of both within- and cross-dyad influences of parents' work-family experiences on child problem behaviors. Our results indicated that the way parents balance work and family is associated with their parent-child relationships, which in turn is differentially linked with their children's behaviors. We found that mothers' work-family conflict (WFC) contributed to children's externalization difficulties through its detrimental associations with their own and with their partners' parent-child relationship quality. By contrast, mothers' work-family enrichment (WFE) was negatively linked to children's externalization difficulties through its positive link with the mother-child relationship. Fathers' experience of WFC was associated with both children's internalization and externalization difficulties through its negative association with their own father-child relationship quality. In addition, fathers' experience of WFE also linked to children's externalization difficulties, but only indirectly, via its positive association with the quality of their relationship with the child. Further implications of these findings for advancing understanding of the impact of work-family dynamics on intrafamily relationships, as well as for individual and organizational interventions, are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record

Objective: There is a well‐established link in the literature between secure romantic attachment orientation and psychological well‐being. The underlying processes of this link and the couple interplay between attachment and well‐being are notably less explored. Using a dyadic framework, this study examines both couple members' emotion regulation strategies as potential mediators of this link.Method: One hundred and nineteen heterosexual couples completed self‐report measures on attachment style, psychological well‐being, tendency to suppress emotions, and emotion expression. Analyses were performed using the actor–partner interdependence mediation model that distinguishes between intrapersonal and interpersonal influences.Results: Results showed that controlling for relationship length, there was an intrapersonal indirect effect of attachment avoidance on psychological well‐being through emotion suppression. Moreover, interpersonal indirect effects were found (a) with individual attachment avoidance being associated with partner's psychological well‐being through own emotion expression and (b) individual's attachment anxiety being associated with partner's psychological well‐being through both own's emotion expression and partner's emotion suppression.Conclusions: These findings highlight the complex associations among attachment, emotion regulation, and well‐being and point out the role of emotion regulation as a potential underlying pathway explaining these associations. The results suggest the importance of considering the relational nature of emotional and attachment dynamics in couples.

Objective: This work aimed to analyze parental burnout (PB) and establish a comparison between the times before (Wave 1) and during (Wave 2) the COVID‐19 pandemic.Background: The COVID‐19 pandemic brought additional stress to families. The pandemic could be particularly difficult for parents experiencing parental burnout, a condition that involves four dimensions: an overwhelming sense of exhaustion, emotional distancing from the child, saturation or a loss of fulfillment with the parental role, and a sharp contrast between how parents used to be and how they see themselves now.Method: A quasi‐longitudinal research design was adopted, comparing two cross‐sectional studies among Portuguese parents (N = 995), with an interval of 2 years between each wave of data collection. Participants were surveyed voluntarily through an online questionnaire located on the institutional web platform of the universities involved in the study. Multivariate analysis of covariance was used to take into account the associations among variables, alongside controlling the possible confounding effects.Results: Parents have overall higher parental burnout scores in Wave 2 than Wave 1, with increased exhaustion, emotional distancing, and contrast, but decreased saturation. Although parental burnout levels remain higher for mothers across the two Waves, the growth is greater for fathers than for mothers.Conclusion: Reconciling childcare with paid work is a stressful and new experience for many fathers. However, results suggest that even amid a crisis, some parents had the opportunity to deeply bond with their children.Implications: We expect this work to encourage stakeholders to consider proper intervention strategies to address potential parental burnout. Also, initiatives that strengthen gender equity within parenting context are needed.

Research on the work–family interface has not consistently addressed how the positive and negative features of work–family dynamics relate to the experience of parenting, and still fewer studies have explored these interrelationships using dyads. This investigation addressed this gap by examining the extent to which mothers’ and fathers’ reports of work–family conflict and enrichment influenced their own and their spouse’s parenting experiences. Each member of 346 dual-earner couples in Portugal completed measures of work–family conflict (WFC) and work–family enrichment (WFE), along with measures of parenting attitudes and competencies. Dyadic analysis revealed that WFC and WFE affected the quality of parenting attitudes and competencies differently in men and women. Also, a differential pattern of crossover effects between partners was found, particularly with respect to the effect of mothers’ work–family dynamics on fathers’ parenting experience. For women, while only one significant partner effect was observed (from fathers’ WFC to mothers’ increased relational frustration), four partner effects were found in men’s parenting experience (from mothers’ WFC to fathers’ increased relational frustration, reduced sense of competence and reduced attachment; and from mothers’ WFE to fathers’ increased involvement). Further implications of these findings for advancing understanding of the impact of work–family dynamics on intrafamily relationships are discussed.