Maternal Socialization Goals, Parenting Styles, and Social-Emotional Adjustment Among Chinese and European American Young Adults: Testing a Mediation Model

ABSTRACT

The authors compared the associations among perceived maternal socialization goals (self-development, filial piety, and collectivism), perceived maternal parenting styles (authoritative, authoritarian, and training), and the social-emotional adjustment (self-esteem, academic self-efficacy, and depression) between Chinese and European American young adults. The mediation processes in which socialization goals relate to young adults’ adjustment outcomes through parenting styles were examined. Results showed that European American participants perceived higher maternal self-development socialization goals, whereas Chinese participants perceived higher maternal collectivism socialization goals as well as more authoritarian parenting. Cross-cultural similarities were found in the associations between perceived maternal authoritative parenting and socioemotional adjustment (e.g., higher self-esteem and higher academic self-efficacy) across the two cultural groups. However, perceived maternal authoritarian and training parenting styles were found only to be related to Chinese participants’ adjustment (e.g., higher academic self-efficacy and lower depression). The mediation analyses showed that authoritative parenting significantly mediated the positive associations between the self-development and collectivism goal and socioemotional adjustment for both cultural groups. Additionally, training parenting significantly mediated the positive association between the filial piety goal and young adults’ academic self-efficacy for the Chinese group only. Findings of this study highlight the importance of examining parental socialization goals in cross-cultural parenting research.

Keywords:

• academic self-efficacy
• Chinese
• cross-cultural
• depression
• parenting style
• self-esteem
• socialization goal

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Portions of this research were presented at the 2004 annual meeting of the American Psychological Association, Honolulu, HI. This study was partly supported by the Graduate Award for International Research provided by Duke University awarded to Dr. Yan Li. The authors are grateful to the undergraduate students for their participation in this study. They thank Cixin Wang for her help with data collection, and also Linda Camras for the helpful comments on the manuscript.