Who is in control? Longitudinal connections between marital power and parental psychological control

The present study explored longitudinal associations between marital power dynamics and parental psychological control and tested whether partners' sense of relational autonomy mediated these connections. Self-determination theory supports that harmful marital dynamics may spill into parenting practices, such as engaging in parental psychological control, and that parents' autonomy may mediate connections. Using an actor-partner interdependence model and an actor-partner interdependence mediation model, this study examined direct associations between marital power and parental psychological control, as well as indirect associations with autonomy as a mediator. Longitudinal dyadic data of 321 married, two-parent families were drawn from three waves of the Flourishing Families Project collected annually from 2009 to 2011. Results indicated that wives' perceptions of a power struggle in the marriage were associated with both partners' greater parental psychological control concurrently and were predictive of increases in their own parental psychological control across the span of 1 year. Although notable connections were found between marital power and autonomy, autonomy did not mediate pathways to parental psychological control. These findings highlight the importance of marital functioning in the use of certain parenting practices and suggest marital power as a potential intervention point when psychological control of children is present. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).