Becoming a parent is a significant life milestone that can bring both positive experiences and substantial challenges. Although research has long recognized the crucial role parents play in shaping their own development, their children’s development, and overall family well‑being, most studies have focused on how parents influence children rather than on parents themselves (See review by Yan et al., 2021). In recent decades, parenting expectations in many European countries have shifted toward a more child‑centered orientation, placing additional pressures on parents and affecting their mental health (Roskam et al., 2021). Consequently, child development and inclusive family well-being will be affected because parents function as interdependent subsystems within the broader family unit, where emotional well‑being, identity processes, personality traits, and relational patterns mutually influence one another, based on Family Systems Theory (Minuchin, 1974; Cox & Paley, 1997). This framework aligns with the idea that parental identity interacts with well‑being and personality to form integrated patterns of functioning, derived from the Identity Theory which conceptualizes identity as a multifaceted system of meanings, emotions, and behavioral commitments that shape how individuals interpret and respond to their roles (Stryker & Burke, 2000). Complementing this view, Jay Belsky’s process of parenting model (1984) and the updated process of parenting model (Taraban & Shaw, 2018) situates parents within nested environmental contexts that shape and are shaped by their internal characteristics. Additionally, Bronfenbrenner’s ecological and later bioecological models argue that development emerges from interactions among personal attributes, proximal processes, and contextual conditions across multiple system levels (Bronfenbrenner, 1979; Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 2006). This ecological lens reinforces the need to conceptualize parents as whole persons‑in‑context, whose identity, well‑being, and personality are inseparable from their environments. Therefore, it is important to understand parental subsystem as whole in promoting all family members’ development and well-being.

Moreover, gender differences permeate the relational mechanisms among family members, shaping both the magnitude and nature of parent-child interactions. Specifically, men and women experience different feelings towards being parents (Rönkä et al., 2003). Also, parental gender plays a critical role in parent-child interactions: mothers often report greater stress and emotional reactivity to adolescent internalizing behaviors (e.g., anxiety, sadness), likely due to societal expectations positioning mothers as primary emotional caregivers (Chaplin et al., 2020). Fathers, by contrast, exhibit stronger reactions to externalizing behaviors (e.g., rule-breaking, impulsivity), potentially reflecting cultural norms linking paternal roles to discipline and authority (Endendijk et al., 2017). Despite these insights, prior research often overlooked paternal perspectives or conflates maternal and paternal experiences, obscuring nuanced gendered pathways. Finally, person‑oriented approaches argue that individuals should be studied as coherent configurations of interacting attributes rather than as independent variables (Bergman & Magnusson, 1997). This methodological perspective provides direct justification for modeling parents using multidimensional profiles that capture real‑world complexity.

Together, these highly cited frameworks offer a robust theoretical foundation for examining parental subsystem as whole, integrated individuals, supporting the use of inclusive, multidimensional profiles to understand parental psychosocial functioning.

Research questions:

1. What kind of parental subsystem profiles (parenting styles, parental belief and well-being etc.,) can be identified among fathers and mothers?
2. How stable are these profiles across time?
3. Are stability and change in terms of profile memberships associated with some covariates, such as contextual factors, child factors (academic self-concept, motivations, well-being)?

1523 Finnish adolescents (1001 mothers, 522 fathers) and their children from four municipalities (two in Central Finland, one in Western Finland, and one in Eastern Finland) were investigated from grades 1-7 and 9, drawing from a large-scale longitudinal study (Authors, 2006-2016).The study followed a cohort of approximately 2,000 Finnish children from kindergarten through Grade 9. At each time point, parents filled in questionnaires concerning their well-being and background information. A Finnish translation (Aro et al., 2009) of the Beck Depression Inventory (Beck et al., 1961) was applied to measure parental depressive symptoms. Parenting stress was measured by a Finnish translation (Rantanen et al., 2015) of the Gerris' Parental Stress Inventory (Gerris, 1993). A Finnish version (Koskelainen et al., 2000) of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ; Goodman, 1997) was self-reported by to adolescents measure their behavior. Family total incomes per month were reported by parents. Parenting styles were assessed using the Finnish adaptation (Aunola & Nurmi, 2005) of Block’s Child-Rearing Practices Report (CRPR; Roberts et al., 1984). First, LPA (Muthén & Muthén, 1998-2017) was employed to identify profiles of parental subsystem well-being (both maternal and paternal depressive symptoms, parenting stress, Parental worries, Parenting styles, Parenting practices in homework situations, and Parental beliefs on child’s academic performance), ranging from one to K latent profiles, separately for fathers and mothers at each measurement time (RQ 1). To assess the discrimination between latent classes, the Moderate Latent Class Posterior Probabilities (AvePP) for individuals with the highest probability of class membership, along with entropy, were utilized. Higher values of AvePP (with a maximum of 1) indicate greater distinctiveness between latent profiles (Nagin, 2005). Then, a simultaneous multinomial logistic regression analysis was conducted, combining all three measurement points and employing the number of profiles and initial values from the previous stage to maintain analytical consistency. This approach generated movement paths from one measurement occasion to the next across all three time points (RQ 2). All analyses described above were conducted by using the Mplus statistical package version 8.11 (Muthén & Muthén, 2017). The subsequent covariates analyses (RQ 3) were then performed through IBM SPSS, utilizing one-way ANOVA, Tamhane’s pairwise comparisons which allow different variances between groups (IBM, Armonk, NY, USA).

The study is still under analysis. However, we hypothesize that various profiles showed differentiated combination of parental indicators as well as gender-specific effects will be identified. Also, the identified profiles will be rather stable over time. Additionally, these profiles will associate with some child characteristics and other covariates. We are quite sure that our results and findings will be ready when the conference start in August.

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