The Bidirectional Relationships Between Parental Psychological Aggression And Junior School Students’ Problem Behavior: Moderating Effects Of Gender

Parental harsh discipline include psychological aggression and physical harshdiscipline.Parental harsh discipline can lead to the short-time and long-time passiveconsequences of children’s development. Meanwhile, children’s high level ofproblem behavior can evoke more harsh discipline. There could be bidirectionalrelationships between parental harsh discipline and children’s problem behavior，andthis relationships could be moderated by child’s gender. However, the previousstudies of harsh discipline mostly focused on physical aggression in western context.Accordingly, the present study explored the prevalence and frequency of parentalpsychological aggression in Chinese societies. Furthermore, based on the theory ofparent-child bidirectional relationship, we examined whether children’s gendermoderates the bidirectional relationships between parental psychological aggressionand junior school students’ problem behavior.The present study used a longitudinal design with a sample of650junior schoolstudents who were recruited from two junior middle schools in Jinan, ShandongProvince. Students were assessed at two points in time. Self-reported questionnaireswere administered to collect the data, including Parent-Child Conflict Tactics Scale(CTSPC) and Child Behavior Check List(CBCL)。The main conclusions of the studywere as follows:1. Parental psychological aggression is prevalent in Mainland China from60%to80%of fathers and mothers perpetrated at least one incident of psychologicalaggression in the previous year. Fathers and mothers who used psychologicalaggression for one or more times reported a mean of about12.0and13.0instancesrespectively in the past year.2. The prevalence of maternal psychological aggression was higher for girls than boys at Time1(T1). There were no gender difference in prevalence of maternalpsychological aggression at Time2(T2), and paternal psychological aggression at T1and T2. The frequency of maternal and paternal psychological aggression werehigher for boys than girls at both T1and T2.3. There were positively significant correlations between parental psychologicalaggression at T1and junior school students’ problem behavior (including externaland internal problem behavior) at T1. There were positively significant correlationsbetween parental psychological aggression at T2and junior school students’ problembehavior (including external and internal problem behavior) at T2.4. Structural equation modeling analyses revealed that parental psychologicalaggression at T1couldn’t predict junior school students’ problem behavior(includingexternal and internal problem behavior) at T2, however, both external and internalproblem behavior at T1could significantly predict parental psychological aggressionat T2.5. Further, structural equation modeling analyses revealed that, for neither boysnor girls, parental psychological aggression at T1couldn’t predict problembehavior(including external and internal problem behavior) at T2; while bothexternal and internal problem behavior at T1could significantly predict parentalpsychological aggression at T2for boys but not for girls.