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The Mutual Role of Mindful Parenting on Parents’ Subjective Well-being and Young Children’s Emotional Regulation Through Reducing Perceived Parenting Daily Hassles

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Abstract

Objectives

Mindful parenting interventions have shown to be positively associated with mental health of both parents and children in clinical settings. However, there is limited research on the links between mindful parenting and parents’ and children’s social-emotional well-being in community samples. The current study aimed to explore the mutual role of mindful parenting on parents’ subjective well-being and children’s emotional regulation in a community sample. We also sought to further examine the mediating role of perceived parenting daily hassles to explain these relationships in a sample of parents with healthy preschoolers.

Methods

Four hundred and ninety-four parents of preschool children (58.3% boys; the mean age = 5.08, SD = 1.15) completed questionnaires assessing mindful parenting, parenting daily hassles, overall life satisfaction, positive and negative feelings, and their children’s emotional regulation.

Results

We found that mindful parenting was related to higher levels of parents’ overall subjective well-being and children’s emotional regulation and lower levels of perceived parenting daily hassles. A decrease in perceived parenting daily hassles may serve as an explanation for the associations between mindful parenting and parents’ subjective well-being and children’s emotional regulation.

Conclusions

This research helped us better understand the associations of mindful parenting with parents’ subjective well-being and children’s emotional regulation through perceived parenting daily hassles among community samples.

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Data Availability

All data are available at the Open Science Framework (OSF | The Mutual Role of Mindful Parenting on Parents’ Subjective Well-being and Young Children’s Emotional Regulation through Reducing Perceived Parenting Daily Hassles).

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the support from the Principal of Wu-Tong-Yuan Kindergarten, Wuhan, Hubei, Qiong Zhang, and all the families participating in our study.

Funding

This study was funded by “the key project of medical scientific research from Wuhan Municipal Health Commission” (grant number WG20B05) and “the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities” (grant number 113–413000007).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, School of Philosophy, Wuhan University, Wuhan, 430072, China

    Wenjuan Zhang

  2. Yale Child Study Center, Yale University, 230 South Frontage Road, PO Box 207900, New Haven, CT, 06520-7900, USA

    Tong Liu

  3. Department of Human Development and Family Sciences, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, 06269, USA

    Suge Zhang

  4. Faculty of Education, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, 100875, China

    Xiaowei Li

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  1. Wenjuan Zhang
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Contributions

WZ designed and executed the study, analyzed the data, wrote the first draft of the manuscript, and collaborated with the revised manuscript. TL and SZ revised the first draft critically for important intellectual content, and contributed significantly to the writing and editing of the final manuscript. XL collaborated in analyzing the data and editing of the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Tong Liu.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were approved by the Institutional Review Board of Wuhan University.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Zhang, W., Liu, T., Zhang, S. et al. The Mutual Role of Mindful Parenting on Parents’ Subjective Well-being and Young Children’s Emotional Regulation Through Reducing Perceived Parenting Daily Hassles. Mindfulness 13, 2777–2787 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-022-01994-5

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