When do parents use positive behavior support? Day-to-day fluctuations in parental moods and coparenting support

Parent's use of positive behavior support-including praise, encouragement, and consistency-is beneficial for adolescent development, yet there is limited research exploring how within-person differences in individual and family factors contribute to why parents use it more or less on a day-to-day basis. This study aimed to examine whether daily parental mood and coparenting support would explain day-to-day changes in parents' use of positive behavior support with their adolescents. This study included a sample of 150 parents (M_age = 43.4, SD_age = 6.9) from two-parent families, who completed a 21-day daily diary protocol. Multilevel model results revealed within-person relations linking daily variation in parents' mood and coparenting support with positive behavior support. On days when parents' positive mood was higher (or negative mood was lower) than usual and when coparenting support was higher than usual, parents used more positive behavior support with their adolescents. When all parental moods were considered simultaneously, daily positive moods remained significant. In addition, daily variation in coparenting support moderated the relation between parents' daily anxious mood and their positive behavior support (but not for daily angry, depressed, or positive moods). In this interaction, the daily anxious mood was only associated with positive behavior support if coparenting support was also high; positive behavior support was consistently low in the context of low coparenting support. These findings have implications for understanding daily parenting processes and interventions aimed at supporting parent's positive behavior support. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).