Marital Satisfaction and Partners' Parenting Practices: The Mediating Role of Coparenting Behavior

We investigated the relationship between spouses' marital satisfaction and partners' parenting practices (emotional support, control attempts, and rejection) and considered the role of coparenting behavior as a mediator of this relationship. Participants were 519 married or living together couples, with 9- to 13-year-old children, living in Lisbon and the east coast of Portugal. Interparental cooperation, interparental conflict, and triangulation of the child were tested as mediators of the associations between marital satisfaction (MS) and parenting practices (PP). Structural equation modeling was used to test two mediation models (maternal parenting and paternal parenting) and to perform multigroup analysis to examine the moderating role of parent and child gender. Results showed that coparenting behavior mediated the association between spousal MS and partners' PP. Child and parent gender moderated the pattern of associations. Relationships were stronger between maternal MS and paternal PP, and many of the associations were significant for parents of boys but not for parents of girls.