Objectives <p>This study aimed to develop the Parental Fears of Compassion Scale (PFCS) to assess fears of compassion in a parenting context and examine the psychometric properties of the PFCS comprehensively.</p> Method <p>Two studies were conducted to evaluate the psychometric properties of the PFCS. Specifically, Study 1 administered a set of questionnaires including the PFCS, the Parental Stress Scale (PSS), the Authoritarian Parenting Scale (APS), and the Parental Involvement Questionnaire (PIQ) to three samples of participants to evaluate the factorial validity, internal consistency and concurrent validity of the PFCS. Parallel Analysis, Confirmatory Factor Analysis and Correlation Analysis were primarily used for data analysis. In Study 2, both the PFCS and the Fears of Compassion Scale along with the other measures were administered to a sample of Chinese parents. Pearson’s correlation analysis, Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) and Wald test were used for data analysis.</p> Results <p>The results of Study 1 showed that the PFCS had good factorial validity with a three-factor structure (CFI = 0.92, SRMR = 0.07, RMSEA = 0.06), as well as good internal consistency. Moreover, parental fears of compassion were found to be significantly related to parenting stress, authoritarian parenting and parental involvement in the expected pattern. The results of Study 2 indicated that parental fears of compassion and general fears of compassion were associated with parent–child conflict and parents’ attachment in different patterns.</p> Conclusions <p>This study provides strong evidence that the PFCS is an effective measurement tool to evaluate parental fears of compassion in a parenting context.</p> Preregistration <p>This study is not preregistered.</p>