Parenting Journal · Volume 1 · Issue 4 · Licensed source edition
Work–Family Conflict, Parental Mental Health, and Children’s Emotional and Behavioral Difficulties
Originally published 2026-02-19 · Children
Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI) · DOI 10.3390/children13020289 ↗
Working-family evidence
Work, care and the whole person.
Relevant to decisions about family-friendly work arrangements evaluated alongside parental wellbeing; the original evidence concerns 313 parents in Portugal reporting on their young children.
Directly examines work and family life, parenting, caregiving or employment policies for families.
Editorial reading guide · Kindness
How can care for a parent's wellbeing become part of caring for a child?
This reading brings parenting stress and depressive symptoms alongside work-family conflict and child difficulties into the kindness pathway. The cross-sectional parent survey with mediation analysis offers a specific workplace lens on how employment and family life meet.
Study context
313 parents in Portugal reporting on their young children
Age / stage: Parents of children aged 18-72 months
Read with three questions
- How did the researchers define and assess parent-reported child difficulties, stress and depressive symptoms?
- What does the study design allow us to conclude about supported distress pathways and the nonsignificant self-efficacy pathway?
- What would need to be checked before adopting family-friendly work arrangements evaluated alongside parental wellbeing?
Keep the limits in view
One parent's simultaneous reports of conflict, distress and child behavior can share reporting bias; cross-sectional mediation does not establish causal child effects.
The text below is the original article’s licensed repository edition. Its wording is not rewritten. Use the Paper Agent beside the text to locate evidence; open the source for figures, tables and complete context.
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Follow the original.
Original authorship, publication date, journal and DOI are preserved. This issue’s TRICK placement and reading questions are editorial additions, not claims made by the original authors.
Vitória Dias; Sara Albuquerque; Ana Beato; Stephanie Alves (2026). Work–Family Conflict, Parental Mental Health, and Children’s Emotional and Behavioral Difficulties Children. https://doi.org/10.3390/children13020289
Permissions checked against the saved article notice; repository publication notices screened 2026-11-05. This is not a new peer-review decision. The source authors and publishers are not represented as endorsing this issue.