Poster #139 - Longitudinal Linkages between Parental Control and Adolescent Maladaptive Outcomes: The Mediating Role of Emotion Regulation

• In Event: 3-053 - Poster Session 10
  In Poster Session: PS 10 Section - Parenting & Parent-Child Relationships

Integrative Statement

Parental control is crucial to children’s adjustment problems. However, some empirical studies have demonstrated that parental control could effectively inhibited delinquency, whereas some studies have found that parental control unintentionally provoke defiance with more internalizing and externalizing problems, specific for early adolescents. Underlying these inconsistent findings, the first question of this study is whether and how parents should grant autonomy or exert control over their children and adolescents. Additionally, identifying the complex processes in family systems by examining children’s emotion regulation strategies as mediators between parental control and the maladaptive outcomes among children and adolescents is the second goal in this study. Moreover, we also aim to verify whether the linkages between parenting behavior and adolescent outcomes are moderated by child gender. Thus, this study investigate the longitudinal linkages between parental control (i.e., psychological control and behavioral control) and child maladaptive outcomes (i.e., problem behaviors combined with depressive symptoms), and the mediating role of children’s emotion regulation strategies (i.e., cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression) and the moderator role of child gender.
Participants were 638 elementary school students (10.891.05 years old , 73.4% boys) and their parents in China. After controlling for children’s age, school and subjective perception of social status, the mediation model fit presented a good fit [χ2 = 10.49, df = 6, CFI = 0.99, TLI = 0.97, RMSEA = 0.04]. Parental psychological control was associated with children’s increased depression symptoms (β = .25, p < .001) and problems behaviors (β = .21, p < .001) by decreased their cognitive reappraisal (β = -.09, p = .025), and parental behavioral control showed association with decreased maladaptive outcomes (ps < .001) and increased cognitive reappraisal (β = .16, p < .001). Neither parental psychological control nor behavior control was significantly associated with children’s expressive suppression (ps > .09). Additionally, multiple-group path analysis by child’s gender (Δχ2 = 7.99, Δdf = 12, p > 0.5) showed no significant gender difference in the whole interaction process between parental control, children’s emotion regulation and their adjustment problems.
Our findings showed that parental psychological control and behavioral control did have different associations with children’s internalizing and externalizing problems, and children’s cognitive reappraisal, but bot expressive suppression, mediated the relations between two parental control and two maladaptive outcomes. Moreover, the complex mechanisms had no child gender difference. These findings may not only highlight the importance of the specialized mechanism for a better theoretical understanding of the association between parental control and children’s emotional and behavioral problems but also provide directions for possible targets for more effective interventions.

Authors

• Xu Liu, Beijing Normal University
  Presenting Author

• Xiaoyan Li, Beijing Normal University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Danhua Lin, Beijing Normal University
  Non-Presenting Author