The daily association between maternal and paternal financial stress, marital interactions, and parent-child conflict.
Although the family stress model has received extensive empirical attention, little is known about how these processes might occur at the daily level and when considering both mother-child and father-child dyads. Data included 136 mothers' and 59 fathers' daily reports of their perceptions of daily financial stress, negative marital interactions, and oppositional parent-child conflict during early middle childhood. Reports were collected through online surveys for 7 consecutive days. Multilevel structural equation modeling indicated that at the within-person level, mother-reported financial stress was positively related to mother-child oppositional conflict qualities through mother-reported negative marital interactions. Father-reported financial stress was related to their same-day negative marital interactions. At the between-person level, mother-reported negative marital interactions were positively related to mother-child oppositional conflict characteristics. These findings contribute innovative information regarding the spillover effect from parental stressful experiences to their interactions with other family members in daily context and reveal unique processes in different family dyads' daily lives. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).