The article describes the research aimed at studying the correlations between parental competencies, emotional states and parenting stress of mothers of preschool and primary school children (4-9 years old). Parental competencies - are parenting skills reflected in parent’s behavior and aimed at influencing child’s behavior. Parenting stress - is the specific stress parents have in upbringing the child. It may be influenced by child’s characteristics, as well as parent’s characteristics and life stress. Scientific data shows that parenting stress may be connected to such parents’ emotional states as anxiety and depression and may influence parenting skills. In our study 59 mothers of preschool and primary school children participated. All mothers have a stable partner and belong to middle class. Measures: State and Trait Anxiety (Spielberger), Beck Depression Scale, Parenting Stress Index (Abidin), Parental competencies (Method of Unfinished Situations by Mikheeva). Statistics: correlation and factor analysis. Results: about 50 % of the sample have moderate and high level of anxiety, 14 % have depressive symptoms; 10 % of the sample have life stress events, and 32 % have high level of total stress. Correlational and factor analysis showed strong positive connections between emotional states (anxiety and depression) and parenting stress, and separately - negative connections between parenting stress and parental competencies. This means that is our sample these groups of parameters constitute different non-connected complexes where parenting stress characteristics are parts of both complexes.