Parenting Styles and Children’s Science Skills: Moderated Mediation Model of Parental Involvement and Child Self-regulation

• In Event: Poster Session 06
  In Poster Session: PS 06 Topic - Parenting & Parent-Child Relationships

Abstract

Parenting styles have been widely studied and linked to children’s developmental outcomes. However, there is a dearth of research on the relationships between parenting styles and children’s early science skills. This study intended to examine whether the relationships between parenting styles and children’s early science skills were mediated by parental involvement and whether parental involvement’s mediating effects were moderated by child self-regulation. Specific hypotheses tested are as follows:

Hypothesis 1: Parental involvement would mediate the relationship between authoritative (H1a) and authoritarian (H1b) parenting style and children’s science skills.

Hypothesis 2: Child self-regulation would moderate the relationship between authoritative (H2a) and authoritarian (H2b) parenting style and parental involvement.

Hypothesis 3: Child self-regulation would moderate the mediating effect of parental involvement in the relationship between authoritative (H3a) and authoritarian (H3b) parenting style and children’s science skills.

A total of 226 children (M = 62.10 months, SD = 4.14) and their parents participated in this study. Participants were solicited with informed consent through five kindergartens in Fuzhou, China. The authoritative and authoritarian parenting styles were assessed using the 32-item Parenting Style and Dimension Questionnaire (PSDQ; Robinson et al., 1995). The Chinese Early Parental Involvement Scale (CEPIS; Lau et al., 2011) was employed to assess the extent to which parents were involved in six dimensions of home learning and preschool learning contexts. Child self-regulation was assessed using the Head-to-Toes Task (HTT; Cameron Ponitz et al., 2008), which covers three aspects of self-regulation: inhibitory control, attention, and working memory. Children’s science skills were assessed using the science-relevant Picture Problem Solving Task (PPST; Fusaro & Smith, 2018; Lin et al., 2020).

Correlation analyses revealed that the authoritative parenting style was positively correlated with parental involvement, while the authoritarian parenting style was negatively correlated with parental involvement. Both parental involvement and child self-regulation were positively correlated with children’s science skills. Parenting styles were not correlated with children’s science skills.

We used the SPSS macro PROCESS (Hayes, 2020) to test the hypotheses in the moderated mediation model. Parental involvement has a significant mediating effect in the relationship between authoritative/ authoritarian parenting style and children’s science skills, thus supporting H1a and H1b.

The interaction of authoritative parenting style and child self-regulation had a significant effect on parental involvement (β = 0.02, p = 0.04; see Table 1), indicating that child self-regulation moderated the relation between authoritative parenting style and parental involvement, thus supporting H2a. However, the interaction of authoritarian parenting style and child self-regulation on parental involvement was not significant (β = 0.01, p = 0.28; see Table 2); thus, H2b was not supported.

The conditional effect analyses revealed that the moderated mediation effect was significant for the authoritative parenting style, thus supporting H3a. However, the indirect effect of authoritarian parenting style on children’s science skills through parental involvement was observed when child self-regulation was low and medium, but not high (See Table 2). Therefore, H3b was not fully supported.

These findings have important implications for understanding the mechanism underlying the relation between parenting style and children’s science skills.

Authors

• Weipeng Yang, Education University of Hong Kong
  Presenting Author

• Xunyi Lin, Fujian Normal University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Hui Li, Macquarie University
  Non-Presenting Author