The relationship between parenting styles and emotional competence in Chinese young children: a moderated mediation model.

Abstract

The development of young children's emotional competence not only affects their current mental health and well-being but also has a profound impact on their future socialization, learning ability, and overall quality of life, and the relationship between parenting styles and young children's emotional competence has attracted the attention of researchers. A total of 713 parents completed measures of parenting styles, toddler parent-child attachment, young children's working memory, and young children's emotional competence using questionnaires in this study. The mediating role of young children's working memory between parenting styles and young children's emotional competence and the moderating role of parent-child attachment quality therein were examined through the construction of a moderated mediation model. First, negative parenting styles (doting, permissive, authoritarian, and inconsistent) negatively predicted young children's emotional competence, and democratic parenting styles were significant positive predictors of young children's emotional competence; Second, young children's working memory plays a partial mediating role between parenting styles (doting, democratic, permissive, authoritarian, inconsistent) and young children's emotional competence; Third, parent-child attachment quality moderates the mediating pathway from negative parenting styles to young children's emotional competence through young children's working memory. That is, high parent-child attachment quality can somewhat mitigate the negative effects of negative parenting styles on young children's working memory capacity and young children's working memory on their own emotional capacity; However, when parents adopt a democratic parenting style, the second half of the mediating pathway is moderated by parent-child attachment quality. That is, low parent-child attachment quality reinforces the negative predictive effect of young children's working memory on their own emotional competence. The impact of parenting styles on young children's emotional competence and the importance of cognitive functioning and parent-child attachment in that relationship are emphasized. These findings provide ideas on how to promote emotional competence in young children from a cognitive and attachment perspective.