Adoptive Parents’ Emotion Regulation Difficulties and Children’s Emotional and Behavioral Difficulties: The Mediating Role of Mindful Parenting and Parental Stress

Parenting processes may be relevant to child adjustment in the context of adoption-specific challenges, yet little is known about the associations among these processes. This study examined the sequential indirect association between parents’ emotion regulation difficulties and children’s emotional and behavioral difficulties (EBD) through mindful parenting and parental stress, and explored whether these indirect associations differed between adoptive (n = 298) and non-adoptive (n = 324) families of children and adolescents aged 2–17 years. Parents completed measures of emotion regulation difficulties, mindful parenting, parental stress, and children’s EBD. A sequential indirect association was identified in both family types, whereby greater parents’ emotion regulation difficulties were associated with lower mindful parenting, higher parental stress, and greater children’s EBD. Exploratory analyses suggested differences in specific indirect associations across family type, with mindful parenting showing a stronger indirect association in adoptive families and parental stress in non-adoptive families, while the sequential indirect association did not significantly differ between groups. These findings highlight potentially relevant parenting processes across family contexts and identify mindful parenting and parental stress as promising targets for future longitudinal and intervention research.