This study examined the mediating effect of parenting styles in the relationship between parenting stress and children’s socio-emotional adjustment through Structural Equation Modeling. The moderating role of parent and child gender was also examined by means of a multi-group analysis. A sample of 552 mothers and 501 fathers of Portuguese families with preschoolers participated in the study. Mothers and fathers independently completed self-report measures to evaluate parenting stress, parenting styles and the child’s socio-emotional adjustment (children’s social skills, internalizing and externalizing behavioral problems). Results regarding direct effects indicated that mothers’ and fathers’ stress contributed to the child’s social skills. Additionally, results showed indirect effects: fathers’ authoritative parenting mediated the link between fathers’ stress and social skills, regardless of the gender of the child, while for mothers, the corresponding mediation effect was only observed for daughters; fathers’ authoritarian parenting mediated daughters’ externalizing problems while fathers’ permissive parenting mediated daughters’ internalizing problems. Overall, this study emphasizes the importance of both parents for the adjustment of their children, in addition to the need to examine dyadic parent–preschooler relationships, given that the results suggest some specificity in the processes responsible for direct and indirect effects.

This work presents a theoretical and integrative review about parental self-regulation and emotional regulation processes, and its connections with parental coping and temperament. Parents' adaptation requires the ability to regulate their own behavior in reaction to their perception and interpretation of the child's behavior. These self-regulation processes are often intertwined with intense emotions that need to be regulated. Parenting attitudes and behaviors cannot be fully understood without considering the parents' emotional dysregulation and their emotional regulation strategies. However, only few studies focus the effects of parents' emotional regulation strategies on the parenting behavior. Experiential avoidance and overprotection are discussed as extreme cases of parental emotional regulation strategies that may have particularly detrimental effects in childrearing. The authors propose that, although the main parenting interventions already use a self-regulation approach, specific training in adaptive emotional regulation strategies should be included in these programs.