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Updated: Feb 28, 2026

Assessing the Coherence of Parents' Short Narratives Regarding their Child Using the Five-Minute Speech Sample Procedure
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Work-Family Conflict, Parental Mental Health, and Children's Emotional and Behavioral Difficulties

Vitória Dias1, Sara Albuquerque1, Ana Beato1

  • 1HEI-Lab: Digital Human-Environment Interaction Labs, Lusófona University, Campo Grande 376, 1749-024 Lisbon, Portugal.

Children (Basel, Switzerland)
|February 27, 2026
PubMed

Insights

Work-family conflict (WFC) negatively impacts child adjustment by increasing parental stress and depressive symptoms. Addressing parental mental health is crucial for early intervention strategies.

Area of Science:

  • Child Development
  • Parenting Research
  • Mental Health Studies

Background:

  • Work-family conflict (WFC) is a significant stressor for working parents.
  • WFC is linked to adverse child adjustment outcomes.
  • Mechanisms connecting WFC to child emotional and behavioral difficulties require further investigation.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To examine the mediating role of parental mental health in the WFC-child difficulties link.
  • To investigate parental stress, depressive symptoms, and self-efficacy as mediators.
  • To explore the moderating effect of child age.

Main Methods:

  • Quantitative, cross-sectional study in Portugal.
  • 313 parents of children aged 18-72 months.
  • Validated self-report measures for WFC, parental mental health, and child difficulties; mediation/moderated mediation analyses.

Main Results:

  • Higher WFC correlated with increased child emotional and behavioral difficulties.
  • Parental stress and depressive symptoms fully mediated this association.
  • Parental self-efficacy did not significantly mediate the relationship; effects were consistent across age groups.

Conclusions:

  • Parental psychological distress is a key pathway linking WFC to child adjustment issues.
  • Interventions targeting parental mental health and reducing WFC are recommended.
  • Findings support early prevention and intervention strategies for working families.
Abstract

Keywords:
children’s emotional and behavioral difficultiesdepressive symptomsparental self-efficacyparental stresswork–family conflict

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