This study investigated whether Japanese women’s perceived marital and social support affect their parenting self-efficacy directly or indirectly through their levels of parenting stress. Participants were 98 mothers of children in the second grade living in Sapporo or Osaka, Japan. Data collected through surveys were submitted to a structural equation modeling. Results showed that marital support, mothers-in-law support, and friend support each lowered women’s parenting stress, and the low stress in turn increased women’s parenting self-efficacy; however, the indirect effects of mothers-in-law support and friends support on parenting self-efficacy only approached statistical significance. The support from the women’s own mothers directly affected women’s parenting self-efficacy while the criticism from own mothers dampened women’s parenting self-efficacy indirectly by increasing their levels of stress. This study suggests that the criticism targeted to women from family and friends are detrimental to their psychological well-being, which in turn affects their parenting self-efficacy.
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