Maternal Overcontrol and Young Children’s Internalizing Problems in China: The Roles of Social Competence and Teacher-Child Conflict

ABSTRACT

Research Findings: This study aimed to explore the mediating role of social competence and the moderating role of teacher-child conflict in the relation between maternal overcontrol and Chinese preschooler’s internalizing problems. Participants were 216 children aged 3–4 years, from two kindergartens in Shanghai, China. Mothers completed the observation of mother-child interaction task. Teachers completed the assessment of children’s social competence, internalizing problems, and teacher-child conflict. Result of mediation showed that maternal overcontrol indirectly predicted child internalizing problems through its negative association with child social competence. Moderated mediation results show that teacher – child conflict moderated the relation between maternal overcontrol and child social competence. Moreover, lower levels of teacher-student conflict can buffer the negative impact of maternal overcontrol on child social competence, and thus reduce children’s internalizing problems. Practice or Policy: Maternal overcontrol as a negative parenting is related to children’s maladjustment in current China. Reducing teacher-child conflict might alleviate the negative effects of maternal overcontrol on child social adjustment.

Acknowledgments

The execution of this paper was a combined effort on behalf of all authors. YL and JJS conceptualized and designed the study. The data collection was conducted by JJ, WJ, ZJ and MM. JSL and CH drafted the initial manuscript before JJS and YL contributed to the writing of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethics Statement

All procedures performed in the study involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the Research Ethics Committee of Shanghai Normal University. Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants and their parents/legal guardians in the study.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China [31971001] and China National Society of Early Childhood Education [grant number K20210054]. The funding agents had no role in the study design, the collection, analysis, and interpretation of the data, or in the writing of the manuscript.