Kaisa Aunola University ojHelsinki, FinlandOne-hundred and five 6-to 7-year-old children were given a test meas uring their helpl essness, fa ilure expec tatio ns, task-irrelevant beha viour, lack of p ersist ence and search fo r social suppo rt in a classroom setting in order to examine the impact ofpar ental well-being a nd parentin g styles on the childre n's cog nitive and behavioural strategies at school. Both par ents were also asked to fill in scales measuring their depression, parenting stress and parenting styles. The res ults reveal ed th at matern al .dep ressive symp to matology was associated with their children's use of maladaptive strategies, whereas pa ternal dep ress ion was not. Moreo ver, maternal auth or itat ive parenting styles and authoritarian control, seemed to decrease their children 's use of maladaptive strategies. On the other hand, the more parenting stress reported by the fa thers, the more their children showed the use ofmaladapti ve strategies.It has be en su ggest ed that the cog nitive and be hav io ural stra tegi es childre n and adolesce nts apply in classroom settings may provide a basis for their school achievement. Helplessness beliefs and related passivity (Diener & Dweck, 1978), being afraid of failure, task-irrele vant behaviou r and lack of persistence in the task at hand (Nurmi, Onatsu, & Haavisto, 1995a) have been found to lead to low achievement and related problems at school. For exa mple, Nurmi et a l. (1995a ) fou nd that und er achieving adolesc ents appl ied dysfunction al cognitive and behavioural patterns that res embled the se lf-handicapping behaviours des cribed earl ier by Jones and Berglas (1978). They showed higher levels of failure expectations and task-irrelevan t behaviour than their matched-pa ir controls. Butkow sky 544