ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychiatry
Sec. Public Mental Health
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2025.1652814
The relationship between parental intimacy quality and young children's emotional and behavioral problems: the chain mediating role of parenting stress and parent-child relationship
Provisionally accepted
- 1Fujian Institute of Education, Fuzhou, China
- 2Ningde Normal University, Ningde, China
- 3Jimei University Chengyi College, Xiamen, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Introduction: Young children's emotional and behavioral problems represent a significant public health concern globally. This study investigated the underlying mechanisms of parental intimacy quality and young children's emotional and behavioral problems, focusing on the roles of parenting stress and parent-child relationship. We hypothesized that : (1) Parenting stress plays a mediating role in the relationship between parental intimacy quality and young children's emotional and behavioral problems; (2) Parent-child relationship plays a mediating role in the relationship between parental intimacy quality and young children's emotions and problem behaviors; (3) Parenting stress and the parent-child relationship play a chain mediating role in the relationship between parental intimacy quality and young children's emotional and behavioral problems. Method: An online survey was administered to 1868 young children's parents in Fujian province, China, using convenience sampling methods. Data were analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM) with the software Mplus 7.4 to examine the relationships between parental intimacy quality, parenting stress, parent-child relationship and young children's emotional and behavioral problems. Results: The findings indicated that (1) parenting stress plays a mediating role in the relationship between parental intimacy quality and young children emotional and behavioral problems; (2) parent-child relationship plays a mediating role in the relationship between parental intimacy quality and young children emotional and behavioral problems; (3) parenting stress and parent-child relationship play a chain mediating role in the relationship between parental intimacy quality and young children's emotional and behavioral problems. Conclusion: Our study highlights the close relationship between parental intimacy quality and young children's emotional and behavioral problems, in which context parenting stress and parent-child relationship play a vital role.
Keywords: parental intimacy quality, emotional and behavioral problems, parenting stress, Parent-child relationship, young children
Received: 24 Jun 2025; Accepted: 06 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Jiang, Zhang, Shi and Wang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Xiaofen Wang, 201751000006@jmu.edu.cn
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.