Parenting and Child Self-Regulation in Chinese Families: A Multi-Informant Study

Abstract

Theory suggests that parenting affects the development of important psychological and behavioral outcomes. Many studies relate dimensions of parenting style such as demandingness and responsiveness to child outcomes including self-regulation. Few studies, however, relate parenting to self-regulation using Eastern Asian samples. The present study uses the China Family Panel Study (CFPS), a nationally representative Chinese survey, to investigate cross-sectional relations between parenting factors (responsiveness, behavioral control, and perceived responsibility) and child self-regulation, which was reported by both parents and ten-year-old children (N = 485). After controlling for demographics and self-esteem, perceived responsibility and responsiveness related to higher self-regulation in children, as reported by parents and children. Parents’ behavioral control of children was unrelated to self-regulation. Our findings that behavioral control showed nonsignificant relations to self-regulation in Chinese children indicate that parenting theory developed using western samples may generalize poorly to Chinese and other Eastern Asian populations.