Abstract
Past research supports the detrimental effects of parental psychological control on adolescent school adjustment in both emotional and academic domains. However, how psychological control changes during adolescence, and how such developmental course is related to adolescent psychological well-being and academic functioning are unclear. The direction of effects between parenting and child behaviors is also inconclusive. This 3-year longitudinal study addressed these research gaps by using five waves of survey data on 710 Chinese adolescents of high school ages (Mean age at T1 = 15.54 years, SD = 0.45, 50% males). Using latent growth curve models and latent class growth analysis, the majority of adolescents (about 63%) reported gradual increases of parental psychological control in the first 2 years of high school but a slight decline afterwards, while the other 37% perceived low and stable levels. Results from parallel latent growth modeling suggested that trajectories of psychological control were positively related to developmental trends of internalizing problems (i.e., depression and anxiety) and maladaptive academic functioning, but negatively associated with the trajectory of adaptive academic functioning, as indexed by intercept-intercept and slope-slope associations. The random-intercept cross-lagged models further revealed that psychological control was predictive of adolescent anxiety and lower adaptive academic functioning, and bidirectionally associated with maladaptive academic-related beliefs and behaviors at the within-person level. Taken together, these findings highlight the crucial role of parental psychological control on adolescent school adjustment in the Chinese cultural context and support the reciprocal model of parent-child interactions.
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Funding
This study was supported by the grant from the STI 2030—Major Projects (2021ZD0200500), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (71373081) and the Science and Technology Commission of Shanghai Municipality Grant (No. 21511100101).
Data Sharing and DeclarationThe datasets generated and/or analyzed during the current study are available in the OSF repository, https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/9HV6S.
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H.Z. participated in the design, performed the statistical analysis, interpreted the findings, drafted and edited the manuscript; J.L. participated in the design, performed the statistical analysis, and interpreted the results; C.D. conceived the study, participated in its design, coordination and data collection, helped to revise the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. The study was approved by the Human Subjects Protection Committee of the East China Normal University (Protocol number: HR2010/09001).
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Zhou, HY., Liu, JY. & Deng, C. Trajectories of Perceived Parental Psychological Control and the Longitudinal Associations with Chinese Adolescents’ School Adjustment across High School Years. J. Youth Adolescence 53, 2060–2079 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-024-01995-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-024-01995-8