The Influence Of Rough Parenting On Adolescent Depression And Social Anxiety

Harsh parenting refers to a wide arrange of physical and verbal aggression toward children enacted by parents who feel dissatisfied with children’s performance,especially when children do wrong.It also includes parents’ negative emotional responses to their children and other compulsive/controlling behaviors.According to previous studies,negative parenting behaviors may induce adolescents’ internalizing problems such as depression and social anxiety,and adolescents’ attention bias,negative cognitive style and emotional regulation ability may be the mechanism between them.However,there is a lack of research on the mechanism of how harsh parenting triggers adolescents’ internalizing problems.On the one hand,parents’ negative evaluation and neglect may cause children to form a negative cognitive schema,which is a risk factor for depression and social anxiety in adolescents.On the other hand,parents’ aggressive behaviors or negative emotional expressions toward children may undermine the ability of children’ emotional regulation and lead to emotion dysregulation,which is also a risk factor for depression and social anxiety in adolescents.In addition,cognition is the main way to regulate emotions,and attention and interpretation biases will affect the process of emotional regulation,then lead to individuals’ non-adaptive emotional response.Therefore,this paper intends to investigate three mediating mechanisms of parental harsh parenting affecting adolescent depression and social anxiety: the mediation of cognitive reactivity,the mediation of emotional dysregulation,and the sequential mediation of cognitive reactivity and emotional dysregulation.This paper is mainly divided into three studies,mainly adopting questionnaire survey method and situational story assessment method for data collection,and using SPSS 22.0 and Amos 17.0 for data analysis.First,study 1 consists of two studies: study 1-a and study 1-b.Study 1-a was a preliminary study,which analyzed the reliability and validity of the measurement tool of cognitive reactivity in adolescent.On this basis,study 1-b investigated the relationship among parental harsh parenting,adolescent cognitive reactivity and emotional dysregulation.Then based on study 1,study 2 investigated the mediating effect of adolescents’ cognitive reactivity and emotion dysregulation in the relationship between parental harsh parenting and adolescent depression,and study 3 investigated the mediating effect of adolescents’ cognitive reactivity and emotion dysregulation in the relationship between parental harsh parenting and adolescents’ social anxiety.The research results and conclusions of this paper are as follows:(1)The measurement tool of cognitive reactivity has good reliability and validity.The cognitive reactivity includes five dimensions: negative self-attribution,negative relationship expectation,sadness vulnerability,anger vulnerability and negative evaluation sensitivity.(2)Parental harsh parenting significantly positively predicted adolescents’ emotion dysregulation;adolescents’ cognitive reactivity significantly positively predicted their emotion dysregulation;adolescents’ cognitive reactivity played a partial mediating role in the relationship between parental harsh parenting and adolescents’ emotion dysregulation.In other words,parental harsh parenting not only directly affects emotion dysregulation,but also leads to emotion dysregulation by improving adolescents’ cognitive reactivity.(3)Parental harsh parenting significantly positively predicted adolescents’ depression;adolescents’ cognitive reactivity and emotion dysregulation played a mediating role in the relationship between parental harsh parenting and adolescents’ depression,while adolescents’ cognitive reactivity and emotion dysregulation play a partial sequential mediating role in the relationship between parental harsh parenting and adolescents’ depression.In other words,parental harsh parenting not only increases the risk of adolescents’ depression by improving their cognitive reactivity or emotion dysregulation,but also further increases the risk of depression in adolescents by increasing their cognitive reactivity,which in turn leads to emotion dysregulation in adolescents.(4)Adolescents’ cognitive reactivity mediates the relationship between parental harsh parenting and adolescents’ social anxiety,adolescents’ cognitive reactivity and emotion dysregulation play a complete sequential mediating role in the relationship between parental harsh parenting and adolescents’ social anxiety.In other words,parental harsh parenting not only increases the risk of adolescents’ social anxiety by improving their cognitive reactivity,but also further increases the risk of social anxiety in adolescents by increasing their cognitive reactivity,which in turn leads to emotion dysregulation in adolescents.The results of this study suggest that parents should avoid or reduce harsh,punitive,and hostile behavior when disciplining their children,so as to prevent children from developing negative cognitive styles or emotional dysregulation,and thus reduce their risk of depression and social anxiety in future.