Fathers' Childcare Success and Maternal Parenting Stress: A Comparative Study of Families With and Without Children Having Neurodevelopmental Disabilities.

Paternal engagement has been described as a relational process that redistributes caregiving responsibilities and strengthens family resilience and function. This study investigated the association between fathers' childcare success and maternal parenting stress by comparing families raising children with neurodevelopmental disabilities (ND) with those raising typically developing (TD) children. Fifty-three fathers of children with ND and 206 fathers of TD children completed online surveys on parenting self-efficacy, childcare knowledge, involvement, communication with their spouse, and perceived social support. In paired surveys, spouses reported on parenting stress. Structural equation modeling indicated that in both groups, higher paternal childcare success was significantly associated with lower maternal stress (ND: β = -0.42, p < 0.05; TD: β = -0.39, p < 0.001). However, the contributing factors differed; in TD families, paternal role awareness, father-child relationship, and spousal relationship were most strongly related to fathers' childcare success, whereas these associations were less prominent in ND families. These findings highlight the importance of interventions that address fathers' psychological traits as well as the specialized skills and knowledge required for parenting children with ND to enhance family functioning and parental well-being.