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Parenting young children could be stressful at times and parenting stress could have an impact on parenting styles and child behavior problems which could lead to difficulties in later life. Therefore, the relationship among these three factors is worthy of examination. In this study we aim to examine the direct relationship between parenting stress, parenting styles, and perceived child behavior problems; and to investigate a model that illustrates the mediating role of negative (authoritarian and permissive) parenting styles on the relationship between parenting stress and perceived child behavior problems in China. A total of 371 parents with preschool age children (3 to 7 years old) were recruited. The results showed higher level of parenting stress was associated with higher level of reported child behavior problems. Parenting stress was positively related to negative parenting styles, and negative parenting styles partially mediated the relationship between parenting stress and child behavior problems. Findings from this study suggested that reducing parenting stress, improving parenting behaviors such as parenting styles, and enhancing parent-child relationship through early support (e.g., parenting skills training) are of vital importance and mutual benefits to the parents, children, and family relationships at large.HighlightsThis study examines the relationships of parenting styles with parenting stress and child behavior problems in Chinese context.Parenting stress was positively associated with child behavior problems.Parenting stress was positively related to negative parenting styles.Negative parenting styles partially mediated the relationship between parenting stress and child behavior problems.

ObjectivesThe objective of the present meta-analysis was to integrate the available research on associations of parenting styles with self-esteem in children and adolescents.MethodsA systematic search in electronic databases (PSYCINFO, ERIC, Google Scholar, and PSYNDEX) and cross referencing identified 116 studies that were included in a random-effects meta-analysis.ResultsCross-sectional studies found small to moderate positive associations of authoritative parenting with self-esteem (r = 0.26; 95%-CI [0.24, 0.29]) while authoritarian (r = −0.18; 95%-CI [−0.21, −0.14]) and neglectful parenting (r = −0.18; 95%-CI [−0.23, −0.12]) were related to lower self-esteem in the offspring. A very small positive association of permissive parenting with self-esteem was observed in studies that defined permissiveness by low control and high warmth rather than only by low control (r = 0.07; 95%-CI [0.01, 0.12]). Cross-lagged analyses found evidence for child effects on change in authoritative (r = 0.13; 95%-CI [0.05, 0.21]) and neglectful parenting (r = −0.28; 95%-CI [−0.34, −0.22] but not on effects of parenting styles on change in self-esteem; however very few longitudinal studies were available. Few moderating effects of study characteristics were identified.ConclusionsWe conclude that correlations between parenting styles and child self-esteem cannot be interpreted as a pure effect of parenting styles and that more longitudinal research is urgently needed for testing potential bidirectional effects.

Previous research has found that parenting style influences academic resilience. Nonetheless, few studies have focused on the mechanism underlying the relationship between parenting style and academic resilience. This study aims to examine the relationship between adolescents' parenting style and academic resilience, drawing upon the framework of Social Cognitive Theory. Specifically, it wants to explore the mediating roles of self-efficacy and academic motivation in this relationship. The participants were 518 students chosen at random from educational institutions in the Chinese provinces of Zhejiang, Shanghai, and Jiangsu. Social Cognitive Theory was the theoretical foundation for the study, and the Parental Authority Questionnaire was used to measure parenting style. Out of the respondents, 55.5% were male and 45.5% female. The student allocation in the study sample was as follows: 62.34% undergraduate, 28.22% master’s, and 9.44% PhD. More than 60% of participants were over 25 years old. Moreover, the findings revealed that parenting style was directly and positively related to academic resilience. Parenting style was also found to be indirectly and positively related to academic resilience via self-efficacy and academic motivation, respectively, and sequentially. More crucially, it was discovered that the direct association was far lower than the indirect effects, with self-efficacy being the most effective. The study indicates a relationship between parenting style and academic resilience in adolescents, with self-efficacy and academic motivation acting as the main mediators. These findings emphasize the significance of these intermediary elements, implying that they play a larger role than the direct influence of parenting style alone.

Recent emergent research is seriously questioning whether parental strictness contributes to children’s psychosocial adjustment in all cultural contexts. We examined cross-generational differences in parental practices characterized by warmth and practices characterized by strictness, as well as the relationship between parenting styles (authoritative, indulgent, authoritarian, and neglectful) and psychosocial adjustment in adulthood. Parenting practices characterized by warmth (affection, reasoning, indifference, and detachment) and strictness (revoking privileges, verbal scolding, and physical punishment) were examined. Psychosocial adjustment was captured with multidimensional self-concept and well-being (life satisfaction and happiness). Participants were 871 individuals who were members of three generations of Spanish families: College students (G3), their parents (G2), and their grandparents (G1). Results showed two different cross-generational patterns in parenting practices, with an increased tendency toward parental warmth (parents use more affection and reasoning but less indifference across generations) and a decreased tendency toward parental strictness (parents use revoking privileges, verbal scolding, and physical punishment less across generations). Interestingly, despite cross-generational differences in parenting practices, a common pattern between parenting styles and psychosocial adjustment was found: indulgent parenting was related to equal or even better self-concept and well-being than authoritative parenting, whereas parenting characterized by non-warmth (authoritarian and neglectful) was related to poor scores.

This article examined parenting styles and prosocial behaviors as longitudinal predictors of academic outcomes in U.S. Mexican youth. Adolescents (N = 462; Wave 1 Mage = 10.4 years; 48.1% girls), parents, and teachers completed parenting, prosocial behavior, and academic outcome measures at 5th, 10th, and 12th grades. Authoritative parents were more likely to have youth who exhibited high levels of prosocial behaviors than those who were moderately demanding and less involved. Fathers and mothers who were less involved and mothers who were moderately demanding were less likely than authoritative parents to have youth who exhibited high levels of prosocial behaviors. Prosocial behaviors were positively associated with academic outcomes. Discussion focuses on parenting, prosocial behaviors, and academic attitudes in understanding youth academic performance.

Some children are more affected than others by their upbringing due to their increased sensitivity to the environment. More sensitive children are at heightened risk for the development of internalizing problems, particularly when experiencing unsupportive parenting. However, little is known about how the interplay between children’s sensitivity and parenting leads to higher levels of depressive symptoms. In the current study, we investigated the interaction between early parenting and children’s sensitivity on levels of depressive symptomatology in middle childhood, exploring the role of rumination as a possible mediator in a community sample. Participants included 196 USA resident families, from a middle class and mostly European–American background, and their healthy children, followed up from age 3 until 9 and 12 years. Environmental sensitivity was assessed observationally when children were 3 years old. Parenting style was based on parent-report at the age of 3 years. When children were nine, they completed questionnaires on rumination and depressive symptoms (repeated at 12 years). Analyses were run applying a Bayesian approach. Children’s sensitivity interacted with permissive parenting in predicting rumination at age 9. Rumination, in turn, was associated with depressive symptoms at age 9 and, to a lesser extent, at age 12. No relevant interactions emerged for authoritative and authoritarian parenting. Sensitive children may be at heightened risk for internalizing problems when exposed to a permissive parenting style. Permissive parenting was associated with increased ruminative coping strategies in sensitive children which, in turn, predicted higher levels of depression. Hence, rumination emerged as an important cognitive risk factor for the development of depressive symptoms in sensitive children.

Internet use can be distinguished into different uses (e.g., leisure-related, learning-related), yet comprehensive studies on how different uses are associated with everyday parenting situations are still lacking. This study attempts to locate parental mediation within broader family contexts and simultaneously considers the relationships among general parenting style, media-specific parenting practices, and adolescents’ amount and types of Internet use. Building on survey data collected from 1284 middle school students in China (mean age = 13, SD = 0.79, 48.60% girls), the Latent Profile Analysis identified three child-perceived profiles of general parenting style: slight-engaged, supportive, and rejecting-controller. The subsequent regressions suggested that adolescents with supportive parents reported lower levels of time spent online as well as leisure-related use; more restrictive parental mediation was associated with reduced leisure-related use while more active mediation was associated with more learning-related use. Notably, associations between parental use of active mediation and youth’s amount of Internet use and leisure-related use varied based on parenting style profiles. Only for the supportive parenting profile, more use of active mediation was associated with decreased amount of Internet use as well as leisure-related use. These findings have implications on how parents can be more effective in guiding youth’s Internet use.

Infant faces are prioritized by the attentional system in parents, resulting in a greater cognitive engagement in terms of response time. However, many biological, contextual and environmental factors relating to this cognitive mechanism have been left unexplored. To fill this gap, this study aims to (i) confirm that infant faces engage more attention compared to adult faces; (ii) investigate whether the attention to infant faces is affected early care experiences of parents; (iii) explore the effect of parents’ sex by taking the amount of involvement with early childcare into consideration. 51 mothers and 46 fathers completed a modified Go/no-Go task, a brief sociodemographic questionnaire, the short version of the Adult Parental Acceptance–Rejection scale, and an ad-hoc question relating to the amount of parental involvement with early childcare. Parents’ response times were slowed in the presence of infant versus adult faces. Parents whose mother was perceived as more sensitively accepting were more engaged by infant cues. By considering the amount of early parental involvement, the sex of parents did not significantly interact with the type of face. These findings provide new insights on the attention process in response to infant cues in parents and suggest that the investigation of experience-based factors may shed further light on this topic.

ObjectivesAlthough studies support a direct association between parent and child emotion regulation, little work has considered potential mechanisms, such as family context. For example, parents who have difficulty regulating their emotions may be more likely to adopt an authoritarian parenting style, especially under high family chronic stress, and this parenting style may then influence children’s development of emotion regulation. The current study examined authoritarian parenting style as a potential mechanism of the intergenerational transmission of emotion regulation. We also examined how maternal emotion regulation and family chronic stress interact to influence parenting behaviors.MethodsA total of 218 mother-adolescent dyads (M age = 15.5 years, 55% female) were recruited from the community and assessed using a mix of self-report measures of emotion dysregulation and parenting style, and interview-based measures of family chronic stress.ResultsResults showed maternal emotion dysregulation predicted authoritarian parenting style that, in turn, predicted adolescent emotion dysregulation, with a significant indirect effect. Family chronic stress strengthened the association between maternal emotion dysregulation and authoritarian parenting style, such that the indirect effect of maternal emotion regulation on adolescent emotion regulation via authoritarian parenting style was stronger at high levels of chronic stress.ConclusionsResults suggest that authoritarian parenting style and family chronic stress serve as important factors in the intergenerational transmission of emotion regulation.

Parenting in Chinese culture has been a central topic and there have been debate on whether western-derived parenting style is applicable to Chinese cultures in terms of both behavioral profiles and their relationships with child and adolescent adjustment. This study identified the subtypes of Chinese maternal parenting style and examined their stability and changes over the transition to early adolescence. In an urban Chinese sample ( N  = 2173, 48% girls), four waves of longitudinal data were collected when the adolescents were in the fifth ( M  = 11.27 years), sixth, seventh, and eighth grades. Latent profile analysis identified four subtypes of parenting style: authoritative, authoritarian, average-level undifferentiated, and strict-affectionate. Adolescents of authoritative mothers exhibited the best overall adjustment, while adolescents of authoritarian mothers showed the worst adjustment. Adolescents of strict-affectionate mothers generally adjusted as well as those of authoritative mothers, except they showed lower academic achievement. The strict-affectionate parenting represented a culture-specific subtype of parenting style in Chinese culture. Latent transition analysis revealed high stability of parenting styles during early adolescence, but transitions between subtypes were also evident. These findings highlight the importance of revisiting Chinese parenting and examining the developmental course of parenting style.