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Abstract
This study examined whether authoritarian parenting, children’s negative emotionality and negative coping strategies independently or jointly predict children’s aggressive behaviour at school. Participants included the teachers and mothers of 185 Hong Kong resident Chinese children (90 girls and 95 boys), aged 6–8. Teachers rated the children’s aggressive behaviour at school, and mothers reported how often they adopted an authoritarian parenting style and rated the children’s negative emotionality and coping strategies. A model predicting children’s aggressive behaviour with maternal authoritarian parenting and children’s negative emotionality affecting children’s aggressive behaviour at school through the mediating effect of children’s negative coping strategies was examined. Mother’s adoption of authoritarian parenting was not related to their perception of the children’s negative emotionality. Neither authoritarian parenting nor negative emotionality alone predicted children’s aggressive behaviour at school. The mediation model was supported. The results imply that school personnel should take children’s emotionality into consideration when offering training programmes on emotion coping strategies for children.
Acknowledgements
This study was supported by a grant from Hong Kong Institute of Education (A775) to the author. The kind assistance of the school principals and the participation of the mothers and teachers were gratefully acknowledged. The author would also like to express sincere gratitude to Nancy Eisenberg for sharing with her the Affect Intensity Measure, the Checklist of Children’s Coping Responses and the Teacher Checklist on children’s social competence, and Fu‐Mei Chen for the permission to use the Chinese version of the short form of the Parental Behaviours Questionnaire.