Parent–child educational aspiration congruence and adolescents' internalizing problems: The moderating effect of SES

Abstract

Previous studies have found that adolescents and their parents may hold discrepant views about educational aspirations. However, little is known about how these discrepancies affect adolescents' internalizing problems and the moderating effect of SES on the relation between (in)congruence of parent–child educational aspirations and adolescents' internalizing problems. Therefore, this study explored the relation between (in)congruence of parent–child educational aspirations and adolescents' internalizing problems, and further tested the moderating role of SES. Based on two-wave survey data collected from a nationally representative sample of 8194 parent–child dyads in China (51.3 % boys, mean age = 13.58 years), multilevel polynomial regression and response surface analysis were performed to investigate the hypotheses. The results found that (1) internalizing problems were minimal when the two educational aspiration variables were congruent, (2) internalizing problems were the highest when the discrepancy between child educational and parental educational aspirations was largest, and (3) SES moderated the relation between (in)congruence in educational aspirations and adolescents' internalizing problems. The study's results not only comprehensively and intuitively reveal the influence of parents' and children's educational aspirations on adolescents' internalizing problems, but also provide targeted guidance and suggestions regarding parenting practices for families from diverse SES backgrounds.