Association between Children's Externalizing Problem, Mindful Parenting and Psychological Control: An Intensive Longitudinal Study

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

Abstract

Parental psychological control refers to intrusive and manipulative parenting behaviors that violate children’s autonomy (Barber, 1996; Soenens & Vansteenkiste, 2010). Although the majority of studies linked parental psychological control to children’s externalizing problems (Stone et al., 2013), the association is not one-way. Indeed, previous research found that children’s externalizing problems are antecedents of parental psychological control (Pettit, Laird, Dodge, Bates & Criss, 2001; Scharf & Goldner, 2018). However, few studies focused on the mechanism of how children’s externalizing problems are associated with parental psychological control. Further, there is a dearth of research examining such associations on a daily basis. The present study investigated the relationship between children’s maladjustment and psychological control, as well as the mediating effect of parenting anxiety using a daily diary design.

Methods: A sample of 71 parents (Mage = 37.99, SD = 5.24) whose child was aged between 6 to 12 years old (Mage = 9.99, SD = 1.49) participated in this study. All parents completed daily questionnaires in 15 continuous days. Parental psychological control and parenting anxiety were measured by items selected from the Chinese version of Psychological Control scale (Wang, Pomerntz & Chen, 2007) and the Parental Feeling Inventory (Bradley et al., 2013). Children’s externalizing behaviors were measured by items selected from the Strength and Difficulty Questionnaire (SDQ, Goodman et al., 1997).

Results: The intensive longitudinal data consisted of two levels, with daily observations being nested within individuals. Intra-class correlations and within-level variances revealed variables’ day-to-day fluctuations. An 1-1-1 multilevel structural equation models (MSEM, Preacher, Zyphur, & Zhang, 2010) were fit. As expected, child’s externalizing behaviors significantly predicted parental anxiety both at the within-individual level, b = 0.65, p < .001, 95% CI = [0.36, 0.95] and between-individual level, b = 1.75, p < .001, 95% CI = [1.01, 2.49]. Further, parental anxiety predicted psychological control both at the within-individual level, b = 0.11, p < .001, 95% CI = [0.07, 0.16] and between-individual level, b = 0.19, p < .001, 95% CI = [0.14, 0.24]. Moreover, parenting anxiety fully mediated the effect of child’s externalizing behavior on psychological control at the within level, ab = 0.07, p < .001, 95% CI = [0.03, 0.12] and partly mediated at the between level, ab = 0.33, p < .001, 95% CI = [0.17, 0.49] (see Figure 1).

Conclusion: The current study investigated how children’s externalizing problems influenced parental anxiety and psychological control both at the daily level and at the individual level. We found that the more problem children behaved each day, the more anxiety parents would feel on that day, which resulted in parents’ more use of psychological control (within-individual effect). Further, children who had more externalizing problems on a daily basis were more likely to elicit anxiety in their parents and psychological control parenting behaviors (between-individual effect).

Authors

• Jiayi Huang, Sun Yat-Sen University
  Presenting Author

• Shuang Bi, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies
  Non-Presenting Author

• Hui Zhou, Sun Yat-sen University
  Non-Presenting Author