Abstract Previous research showed that child’s peer rejection was influenced by parenting. Maternal rejection is defined as mothers who ignore or neglect children, refuse or abuse children, and vehemently deny children's behaviors. However, little is known about the relationship between maternal rejection and peer rejection up to present. Thus, the first aim of this study is to examine the relationship between maternal rejection and peer rejection. Moreover, less is known about the mechanisms underlying the associations between maternal rejection and peer rejection. Peer rejection was influenced by many factors. Househood chaos was an important aspect of the family dynamic environment, which would interfere with the implementation of optimal parenting behaviors and might affect the children's development adaptation outcomes. Previous studies showed that the degree of inconsistency in the family environment was an important background could affect parent-child relationships. Therefore, the current study aims to examine the moderating effects of househood chaos in the associations between maternal rejection and peer rejection. In addition, children have subjective initiative, and children's own subject variables might mediate the moderating effect of househood chaos. We further tested whether the moderating effect of househood chaos might be mediated by child problem behaviors. In this study, 393 children (198 girls, 195 boys) with the mean age of 11.32±0.88 and their parents participated in our research. Children finished a self-reported Short-form Egna Minnen av Barndoms Uppfostran for Chinese (S-EMBU-C) questionnaire, and was obtained peer rejection through peer nomination. Parents finished Confusion, Hubbub and Order Scale (CHAOS), Child Behavior Check List (CBCL) and Family Socioeconomic Status Scale (SES). This study examined the associations between maternal rejection, househood chaos, child problem behaviors and peer rejection. Meanwhile, hierarchical regression analyses were used to examine the moderating role of househood chaos and the mediating role of child problem behaviors in the relationship between maternal rejection and peer rejection. Our findings were as follows:(1)After controlling gender, grade, family socioeconomic status (SES), maternal rejection could significantly predict peer rejection;(2)Househood chaos acted as a moderator between the relationship of maternal rejection and peer rejection, children lived in high househood chaos showed significantly higher peer rejection relative to children lived in low househood chaos, and ability of maternal rejection to predict peer rejection was weakened for children under low househood chaos;(3)Additionally, the moderating effect of househood chaos was completely mediated by child externalizing problem behavior. In conclusion, househood chaos would moderate the associations between maternal rejection and peer rejection. Furthermore, this moderating mechanism was mediated by child externalizing problem behavior. Our findings integrated the mediating and moderating models providing a more comprehensive interpretation to understand how and when maternal rejection impacts peer rejection. Our findings also provided a theoretical and empirical bias for others to study the complicated relationship between maternal rejection and peer rejection. In addition, results from this study highlighted the importance of maternal negative behaviors and family physical environment simultaneously, which broaden our understanding of the processes between parenting behavior and peer relationship.