Retrospective Reports of Perceived ‘Guan’ Parenting: Relationships to Adult Attachment Styles, Emotion Regulation, and Self-Esteem

Abstract

To determine how parental guan is related to social-emotional development in adulthood and how demographic controls might influence the prediction of parental guan on social-emotional development, 176 adults completed a series of questionnaires. We expected that both maternal and paternal guan would be positively related to secure attachment in adulthood, emotion regulation, self-esteem, and social self-esteem, but negatively related to avoidance and anxious attachment in adulthood. Pearson correlations largely supported these expectations. Moreover, the results of hierarchical regression analyses indicated that paternal guan was positively related to self-esteem but negatively related to anxious attachment in adulthood. Maternal guan, on the other hand, significantly predicted emotion regulation. Both maternal and paternal guan were significantly related to secure adult attachment and social self-esteem. Age, gender, and family structure contributed additional variance in some variables. We discuss our results in terms of the protective role of guan parenting in a child’s life.