The purpose of this study was to identify the longitudinal reciprocal relationships among marital conflicts,
marital satisfaction, and perceived parenting stress of the mothers who have young children. For this
research, data of five years of the panel data from the Korea Institute of Child Care and Education were
utilized. The major findings were as follows. First, in an autoregressive model, the previous year’s (first to
third years) marital conflicts, marital satisfaction, and parenting stress of the mothers increased those of
the later year’s (third to fifth years). Second, in a cross-lagged model, the first to third year’s marital
conflicts decreased the second to fourth year’s marital satisfaction and the first year’s marital conflicts
increased the second year’s parenting stress of the mothers. Furthermore, marital satisfaction of the mother
decreased the second to fourth year’s marital conflicts. However, there was no statistically significant effect
of marital satisfaction on parenting stress of the mothers. Lastly, only the fourth year’s parenting stress
had a statistically significant effect on the fifth year’s marital satisfaction and marital conflicts of the
mothers. These findings suggests the need for further research and discussions regarding the mutual
influence among the three variables; marital conflicts, marital satisfaction, and parenting stress.