Parental Behavioral Control, Parental Psychological Control and Parent-Child Relational Qualities: Relationships to Chinese Adolescent Risk Behavior

Abstract

Over three consecutive years, Chinese junior secondary school students responded to the measures of parenting (perceived behavioral control and perceived psychological control), parent-child relational qualities and adolescent risk behavior (substance abuse, delinquency, self-harm behavior, and suicidal behavior). Factor analysis showed that three distinct factors (namely parental behavioral control, parental psychological control, and parent-child relational qualities) were extracted from the father-child and mother-child relational measures, and good internal consistency among the items on the three factors was indicated. In line with the hypotheses, correlation and partial correlation analyses showed that parental behavioral control, parental psychological control, and parent-child relational qualities at Time 1 predicted adolescent risk behavior and their change at Time 3. Regarding the different contributions of fathers and mothers to adolescent risk behavior, results showed that maternal influence predicted changes in adolescent substance abuse and delinquency whereas paternal influence predicted adolescent deliberate self-harm and suicidal behavior over time.