Reciprocal influences between marital quality, parenting stress, and parental depression in Chinese families of children with oppositional defiant disorder symptoms

An increasing body of research showed families with ODD children struggle with impaired quality of family interactions, such as low marital quality and high parenting stress. Yet relatively little is known about their interplay in families of children with oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) symptoms. To examine longitudinal, reciprocal associations, we utilize a three-year, cross-lagged design with a sample of 340 Chinese families of children with ODD symptoms. We also examined the role of parental depression. Marital quality, parenting stress, and parental depression were measured at each wave (T1, T2, and T3) across three years. Results support the “spillover” hypothesis in both directions, such that parenting stress significantly and directly predicts low marital quality, and impaired marital quality predicts parenting stress largely through parental depression. Our findings clearly evidenced the reciprocal relationship between marital and parent-child relationship, and further revealed two different processes for their interplays, among families of children with ODD symptoms. The present study extended the prior understanding of associations between marital and parent-child subsystems and provided suggestions for enhancing the quality of whole family life for families of children with ODD symptoms.