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2 Preliminary evidence suggests that parental catastrophizing about their child’s pain may be important in understanding both parental responses to their child’s pain and the child’s pain experience. However, little is known about potential differences between mothers and fathers. There were three aims of the present study addressing this lack of knowledge: i) to investigate the three-factor structure of the German version of the Parental Pain Catastrophizing Scale (PCS-P) (Goubert et al., 2006) in mothers and fathers of children with chronic pain, ii) to explore differences between mothers and fathers in parental catastrophizing, iii) to investigate the contribution of parental catastrophizing on the child’s chronic pain problem and pain-related parent behavior. In a sample of 128 mothers and fathers of paediatric chronic pain patients, the invariance of the PCS-P was evaluated. Results replicated the previously established three-factor structure (i.e. rumination, magnification and helplessness) in bot