Gender Differences In The Impact Of Parenting Styles On Adolescents’academic Achievement And Social Behavior

This article uses data from the China Education Panel Survey（CEPS）for the 2014-2015 academic year to study the gender differences in the effects of parenting styles on adolescents’ academic performance and social behavior,and in terms of gender-related mechanisms.The results are: first,the authoritarian parenting style has the highest positive influence on learning subjects such as Chinese,English,and Math,while the negligent parenting style has the lowest effect;authoritarian and democratic parenting styles have a greater effect on academic performance than negligent parenting style;for girls,democratic parenting style can better help their academic performance than the authoritarian style;though the opposite is true for boys.Children under the influence of authoritarian,democratic,and autocratic parenting styles perform better at learning than those with negligent parents;notice that much of this discrepancy is achieved by increasing the number of beneficial friends.The sense of efficacy on the learning performance of girls and boys has a certain mediating effect,which is more obvious in the male group.Secondly,authoritarian,autocratic,and democratic parenting styles（compared to the negligent）can make boys and girls more sociable and curb their misbehavior.For the first three styles,however,the influence of authoritarian parenting style is the strongest,autocratic style came second,and democratic style third.The sense of efficacy and the number of beneficial friends can mediate the influence of parenting styles on the prosocial behavior of boys and girls;but the difference in mediation between the two genders is small.The author believes that the gender differences shown in the effects of the above education styles stem from the ways in which traditional Chinese education ideas and gender role beliefs treat boys and girls differently.