The Relationship between Parenting Styles and Secondary Child Mental Health in Second-Child Families: The Mediating Role Played by Sibling Relationships

Abstract

With the development of the two-child policy and changes in family structure patterns, the relationship between parents and young children has received increasing attention, the more prominent of which is the way parents parent their children and their sibling relationship, and the development of children's mental health is particularly important in both relationships. The study explores the mediating role of the sibling relationship between parenting style and preschool children's mental health in second-child families. A total of 369 children and their parents and younger siblings (preschool age) from a primary school in a city in Shaanxi Province were used in this study. The Parenting Style Nurture Questionnaire and Sibling Relationship Scale completed by the parents and the preschool children's mental health questionnaire were used. The results found that: (1) parenting styles of first-born children were significantly correlated with their sibling relationships, i.e. positive (democratic) parenting styles contributed to warm sibling relationships and sibling relationships were significantly correlated with children's psychological health, i.e. warm sibling relationships led to healthy psychological states; (2) sibling conflict and sibling rivalry and jealousy in parenting styles ; (3) sibling conflict and sibling rivalry and jealousy are significant mediators of the four dimensions of parenting styles: coddling, permissiveness, authoritarianism, inconsistency and preschool children's mental health, i.e. children's mental health problems are significantly correlated with sibling conflict and sibling rivalry and jealousy.