Family Parenting Styles,Parent-Child Relationships and Adolescent Psychosocial Development
The high-quality development of adolescents is foundational to the overall high-quality develop-ment of the population.Enhancing adolescent health serves as a critical measure to support this goal,with social and psychological well-being,as an essential aspect of health,warranting particular attention.Families,as the primary environment for adolescent socialization,play a pivotal role in shaping their social and psychological development,with parenting styles being a key determinant.Using data from the 2020 China Family Panel Studies(CFPS),this study conducts an empirical analysis of the effects of various parenting styles on adolescents'social and psychological development and investigates the mediating role of parent-child relationships.The robustness of the findings is verified through propensity score matching and substitution of core explanatory variables,while the stability of the mediating mechanisms is tested using the Bootstrap method.The results demonstrate that parenting styles significantly affect adolescents' social and psychological development.Compared with neglectful parenting,authoritative parenting promotes positive development in adolescents' self-efficacy,conscientiousness,agreeableness,extraversion,open-ness,emotional stability,and sense of group belonging.Authoritative parenting also outperforms permissive parenting in fostering these traits.Conversely,authoritarian parenting is detrimental to adolescents' social and psychological development.Parenting styles influence adolescents'social and psychological well-being indirectly through their impact on parent-child relationships.Authoritative parenting reduces the frequency of parent-child conflict,increases adolescents' trust in and dependence on their parents,and enhances their social and psychological development.However,the capacity of permissive parenting to improve parent-child relationships and foster adolescents'social and psychological well-being is less effective than that of authoritative parenting.In contrast,authoritarian parenting styles often lead to increased parent-child conflicts,diminished trust and dependence on parents,and hindered social and psychological health.Subgroup analysis reveals that authoritative parenting has the most pronounced positive effects on the social and psychological development of girls,rural adolescents,and those aged 10-12 years.Authoritarian parenting has a particularly negative impact on adolescents aged 10-12 years,while permissive parenting demonstrates stronger positive effects on boys' social and psychological development.These findings highlight the critical role of selecting appropriate parenting styles and establishing high-quality parent-child relationships in promoting the social and psychological health of adolescents.Therefore,parents should establish correct view of family education and parenting,build a bridge of trust between parents and children through companionship,interaction,and communication,and set clear educational expectations and behavioral boundaries.They need to continuously learn new parenting skills,embrace advanced parent-ing philosophy,and adjust parenting strategies appropriately to meet the growth needs of their children in line with contemporary contexts.They should also consider suitable parenting methods for their children based on the individual characteristics of their children and family environment,thereby promoting their children's holistic development.Multi-department collaboration,integration of medical,educational,and sports resources,as well as cooperation between home,school,and society are essential to jointly promote the positive development of adolescents'psychosocial well-being.
AdolescentsParenting StylesParent-Child RelationshipsPsychosocial Development