Revisiting Maternal and Paternal Parenting Styles: Differentiating Latent Profiles and Associations With Psychosocial Outcomes of Chinese Adolescents in a National Sample of Parent-Child Dyads.
Aug 2026· Journal des adolescens· 0 citations· 39 references
Medicine
Abstract
INTRODUCTION
Parent-child interactions constitute a critical developmental context for the psychosocial adjustment of adolescents. This study aimed to differentiate parenting styles and examine their domain-specific effects on later adolescent outcomes, using a culturally sensitive, person-centered approach.
Methods
This study employed latent profile analysis (LPA) on a national sample of 8333 Chinese parent-adolescent dyads (4564 mother-child and 3769 father-child dyads) from the China Education Panel Survey (CEPS). At baseline, adolescents were aged 12.93 years on average (SD = 0.82), and 51.5% of them were boys. Analyses were conducted separately for the full sample of parents, mothers, and fathers to identify distinct parenting profiles and their subsequent influence on adolescent academic difficulty, deviant peer affiliation, and depression.
Results
A robust four-profile structure namely Authoritative, Managerial, Warm Harbor, and Disengaged was identified for the full and maternal samples. Crucially, a unique five-profile structure emerged for fathers, featuring an additional Emotionally Detached profile characterized by average discipline but extremely low warmth. Further analyses revealed that the Authoritative and Warm Harbor profiles were associated with more favorable outcomes across all domains, particularly in mother-child dyads. For father-child dyads, the Emotionally Detached profile was uniquely associated with higher academic difficulty, deviant peer affiliation, and depression.
Conclusions
These findings underscore the necessity of using gender-differentiated, person-centered approaches to understand culturally configured parenting and its consequences. Moving beyond uniform theoretical models, these results inform more targeted research and family support practices.
Emerging research has emphasized the crucial roles of parental responses to adolescents' negative emotions in adolescent socioemotional development. Parental responses to adolescents' negative emotions are multidimensional and often interconnected; however, prior research has primarily adopted a variable-centered approach, which may obscure the complex ways in which different parental responses co-occur within families. Moreover, existing research using latent profile analysis (LPA) to identify patterns of parental responses to adolescents' negative emotions has largely focused on mothers and been conducted predominantly in Western cultural contexts. To address these gaps, the present study employed LPA to examine profiles of adolescent-reported parental responses to adolescents' negative emotions at the family level, incorporating both fathers' and mothers' responses, in China. A total of 1,004 adolescents (53.5% female; aged 14-17 years, Mage = 15.25 years, SDage = 0.50) participated in the study at two time points, spaced eight months apart. The results identified three family-level profiles: Disengaged, Harsh and Dogmatic, and Nurturing. Adolescents exposed to non-nurturing parenting profiles were more likely to experience psychological problems compared with those in the Nurturing profile, with girls showing higher levels of psychological problems in the Disengaged profile and boys exhibiting higher levels of difficulties in the Harsh and Dogmatic profile. Both emotion regulation difficulties and parent-child relationship quality mediated the associations between parenting profiles and adolescent psychological outcomes, although the patterns of mediation varied by gender. In conclusion, this study provides longitudinal evidence linking family-level profiles of parental responses to adolescents' negative emotions to adolescent psychological outcomes.
Jie Luo, Tuo Liu, Li-Cheng Huang et al.· Development and Psychopathol...· 0 citations
INTRODUCTION
Parenting styles are associated with adolescent well-being, yet the mechanisms linking family relational resources and individual traits remain less clear, particularly regarding potential differences between maternal and paternal influences.
METHODS
This longitudinal study included 824 early adolescents from China (MAge = 12.68 ± 0.43, 53.90% boys), followed across 4 waves over 18 months. Structural equation modeling was used to examine whether perceived parental trust and support (PTS) and adolescent resilience sequentially mediated the associations between parenting styles (emotional warmth, rejection, and overprotection) and adolescent well-being. Multi-group analyses were conducted to explore adolescent gender differences.
RESULTS
Maternal emotional warmth was positively associated with adolescent well-being by fostering PTS and resilience, whereas maternal rejection and overprotection were indirectly associated with lower adolescent well-being through reduced PTS and the sequential pathway. Crucially, paternal effects were mainly observed in relation to emotional warmth. Multi-group analyses suggested some gender differences, with stronger indirect associations observed among girls for all three parenting styles.
CONCLUSIONS
These findings highlight a sequential pathway linking parenting styles to adolescent well-being through interconnected relational and individual processes and suggest that maternal and paternal parenting, as well as gender differences, should be interpreted with caution. Interventions targeting parent-child relationships may benefit from focusing on enhancing adolescents' perceptions of trust and support.
Ying He, Qian Pu, R. Luo et al.· Journal des adolescens· 0 citations
Objective: This study examined how patterns of parental resources shape home-environment quality and whether parental involvement in early childhood education moderates this process. Parental resources were conceptualized as a multidimensional construct encompassing parental self-efficacy, parenting stress, marital conflict, and father’s involvement.Methods: Data were drawn from the fourth (2011) and sixth (2013) waves of the Panel Study on Korean Children, with a final sample of 1,019 parent dyads of preschool-aged children. Latent profile analysis (LPA) identified subgroups of families with distinct constellations of parental resources. Structural equation modeling (SEM) with bootstrapping was used to evaluate tested mediation effects via parent-child interaction frequency, along with the moderating and moderated mediation effects of parent workshops and homeroom-teacher consultations.Results: Five parental-resource profiles emerged: deficit-conflict, father’s stress overload, resource imbalancelow father’s involvement, father’s stress overload-stable relationship, and stable. These profiles differed significantly in parent-child interaction frequency and home-environment quality. The deficit-conflict profile showed strong negative direct effects on both outcomes, whereas resource imbalance-low father’s involvement showed a significant indirect effect through reduced interaction frequency. Parent workshops increased interaction frequency across profiles, while homeroom-teacher consultations produced significant moderating and moderated mediation effects exclusively for the resource imbalance-low father’s Involvement profile.Conclusion: The effects of parental involvement in early childhood education vary systematically by parentalresource profile, underscoring the need for type-specific, tailored interventions rather than universal approaches. These findings illustrate the value of integrating LPA with moderated mediation modeling to capture heterogeneity in family processes.
Sujung Oh, Sooyeon Byun· Korean Journal of Child Stud...· 0 citations
The literature shows that parenting style is the main factor for the positive development of children at all stages of development. Positive development has been evaluated using various psychological constructs. This study analyzes this relationship using four constructs with a strong adaptive component: dispositional optimism, hope, general self-efficacy and sense of coherence. Additionally, we adopt an ecological perspective and examine whether these associations differ across cross-sectional age groups, sex, and academic pathways. To this end, a sample of 1507 adolescents and emerging adults from different academic pathways, between 12 and 18 years old and 52% female, completed the following questionnaires: the Youth Life Orientation Test (YLOT), Children’s Hope Scale (CHS), General Self-Efficacy Scale (GSS), Sense of Coherence Scale (SOC-13) questionnaires and a scale for evaluating parenting style (Scale for the Evaluation of Parenting Style in Adolescents). A random sampling was carried out by schools in a Spanish province. Previous reliability and validity analyses of the constructs were carried out and correlational analyses and structural predictions were made. The results show that the constructs define a unique factor of positive development and that positive parenting is associated with better positive development. However, the relevance of these relationships are lower as the age group is higher, except in the group of young people with less successful academic pathways. The relation between positive parenting and positive development are different depending on sex, adolescent stage and academic pathway. Families that provide positive support may calibrate their involvement to the needs typically associated with different age groups. Implications for family and academic arenas are discussed.
Álvaro Balaguer, S. Orejudo, Elkin O. Luis· Current Psychology· 0 citations
Emotional competence is central to preschoolers’ socioemotional development and is embedded in everyday family interactions. However, relatively little is known about how parenting processes operate in parent-grandparent co-parenting contexts in China. Guided by Belsky’s process model of parenting, this study examined how mindful parenting and parental involvement were associated with family resources, intergenerational caregiving, and preschoolers’ emotional competence within parent-grandparent co-parenting families.
This study used an explanatory sequential mixed-methods design. In the quantitative phase, 4,020 parents from parent-grandparent co-parenting families in 40 kindergartens across eight provinces in China completed questionnaires. Hierarchical regression and Gaussian graphical network analysis were used to examine associations among parent characteristics, family resources, child characteristics, mindful parenting, parental involvement, and preschoolers’ emotional competence. In the qualitative phase, semi-structured interviews with 20 parents were analyzed using constructivist grounded theory.
Quantitative results showed that mindful parenting, parental involvement, and grandparent support were positively associated with preschoolers’ emotional competence in the final regression model, whereas parental depression and child social withdrawal were negatively associated with it. In the network analysis, home-based parental involvement, mindful discipline, and grandparent support had relatively prominent positive bridge expected-influence point estimates, but these estimates did not differ significantly from one another. Qualitative findings elaborated how parents described emotional regulation, mindful responses, everyday involvement, intergenerational coordination, and adjustments to children’s behavior as interconnected aspects of family emotional caregiving.
The findings highlight an associative parent-grandparent co-parenting ecology in which mindful parenting and parental involvement were related to family resources, intergenerational coordination, and preschoolers’ emotional competence. Efforts to support preschoolers’ emotional competence may therefore consider not only the extent of parental involvement, but also the emotional quality of parenting and the coordination of caregiving between parents and grandparents.
Dongyu Wang, Tongyao Wang, Ruchuan Zhou et al.· Psicologia: Reflexão e Críti...· 0 citations
Parenting is widely regarded as an important factor in children's early moral development. The present study examined the associations between maternal and paternal parenting styles (emotional warmth, overprotection, and rejection) and preschool children's moral sensitivity across the five moral foundation domains (care, fairness, loyalty, authority, and purity) in a Chinese sample, and tested whether child gender and age moderated these associations. Participants were 143 preschoolers aged 3 to 6 years (70 boys, 73 girls) and their parents from six kindergartens in Guangzhou, China. Parents independently completed the short form of the EMBU; children's moral sensitivity was assessed using a scenario-based transgression evaluation task. Regression analyses revealed that parenting associations were concentrated in the loyalty domain: maternal overprotection (β = −0.25, p < 0.01) and paternal emotional warmth (β = −0.21, p < 0.05) were both negatively associated with loyalty sensitivity. There was no evidence that child gender moderated any parenting–moral sensitivity association. Bayesian model comparison favored the no-moderation model in this sample. No parenting associations emerged for care, fairness, authority, or purity, and child age did not moderate any association. These findings suggest that parenting is associated with early moral development in a domain-specific and culturally situated way, with loyalty sensitivity being especially responsive to family socialization processes in the Chinese context.
Weiwei Li, Dan-Yi Su, C. Moore et al.· Frontiers in Psychology· 0 citations
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