Abstract
Development of psychosocial maturity has profound implications for youths’ well-being and positive development in the long run. Nevertheless, little research has investigated the way family socialization contributes to youths’ psychosocial maturity. Both the concepts of family socialization and psychosocial maturity are multifaceted and latent, which may lead to biased results if studied by manifest variables. Also, no existing research has discovered how different family socialization components interact latently to contribute to youths’ psychosocial maturity. The current study, based on a sample of 533 Chinese parent-youth dyads, examined the effects of family socialization by positive family processes and authoritative parenting, and their latent interaction in an integrated moderation and mediation modeling framework on Chinese youths’ psychosocial maturity. Results showed that both positive family processes and authoritative parenting, and their latent interaction significantly predicted the higher psychosocial maturity of Chinese youths. Authoritative parenting acted as a mediator for the relationship between positive family processes and Chinese youths’ psychosocial maturity. Furthermore, the mediating effect of authoritative parenting was conditioned by different contexts of positive family processes, the strongest and least strong effects found in high and low positive family processes, respectively, and moderate effect observed in medium positive family processes. Findings of the current study contribute to our understanding of the complicated family mechanism in relation to youth development, especially in this digital era.
Highlights
Youth development refers to various aspects of cognitive, psychological, and behavioral transformations, for which research has recently pointed to the importance of youths’establishment of psychosocial maturity, due to its profound impact on youths’ long-term adjustment and well-being [1,2]
The current study corroborated that family socialization is a multifaceted concept that latently and interactively contributed to youth development in a dynamic way, for which both family processes and parenting practices and their latent interaction are found synchronously influential on Chinese youths’ psychosocial maturity
Thereby, it is suggested that researchers, family practitioners, educators, and social workers should take a multitudinous perspective to consider and scrutinize the impacts of different facets of family socialization on youth development, scrupulously
Summary
Youth development refers to various aspects of cognitive, psychological, and behavioral transformations, for which research has recently pointed to the importance of youths’establishment of psychosocial maturity, due to its profound impact on youths’ long-term adjustment and well-being [1,2]. Youth development refers to various aspects of cognitive, psychological, and behavioral transformations, for which research has recently pointed to the importance of youths’. Psychosocial maturity is a cognitive construct, closely related to the psychological health and behavioral adaptation of youths. Family is deemed the fundamental and most proximal socialization agent for youth development [3,4], research on the way family socialization shapes youth development of psychosocial maturity is limited, in Chinese societies. It is important to scrutinize the relationship between family socialization and Chinese youths’ development of psychosocial maturity. More research is needed to discover how family processes and parenting practices, the two main family socialization components, concurrently contribute to youths’ development of psychosocial maturity
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