Introduction: Emotional intelligence has been proposed as a human faculty that may have a strong impact on a variety of children's developmental outcomes such as: school achievement, peer acceptance, and behavioral adjustment. It has also been proposed that parenting may influence children's development of emotional intelligence. However, very little research has been done in this area. Method: This study investigates the relation between parenting and emotional intelligence. It was developed in two phases. Phase 1 examined mother's positive and negative parenting and the relation with their children's trait emotional intelligence. Phase 2 investigated authoritative, authoritarian, permissive, and uninvolved parenting styles. Data was collected for both mothers and children using self-report questionnaires. Results: In phase 1, no correlations were obtained between the trait emotional intelligence measures and the two parental variables: positive parenting, and negative parenting. In phase 2, ANOVA analysis showed no significant differences in the trait emotional intelligence of the children among the four parenting styles. Discussion and Conclusion: Results suggest that children's trait emotional intelligence may be more susceptible to specific emotion-related parenting efforts than to their mothers' parenting styles. (Contains 4 tables.)