The Relationship Between Parenting Style And Adolescent Risk-taking Behavior:a Moderated Mediation Model

The risk-taking behavior of adolescents is significantly more than that of children and adults.Risk-taking behavior is divided into socially approved risk-taking behavior and problem behavior.Problem behavior is usually not accepted by the society,endangering the health,even with criminal nature;the positive risk-taking behavior refers to those activities that can be accepted by law and society,which are dangerous but beneficial to the physical and mental health of teenagers.The problem behavior in the youth period not only has a high incidence,but also has a negative impact on the society and the youth themselves;socially approved risk-taking behavior can promote the development of teenagers.Previous studies focus more on problem behavior and less on socially approved risk-taking behavior.The present study will examine the factors influencing both kinds of risk-taking behaviors.According to the ecological systems theory and problem-behavior theory,adolescents’ risk-taking behavior is influenced by personality system and environment system.Family and peer are important environmental factors in the life of teenagers.This study selected parenting style and positive peer pressure as two environmental factors,future orientation as an individual factor and proposed a moderated mediation model to investigate the possible mediating role of future orientation between parenting style and adolescents’ risk-taking behavior,as well as the moderating role of positive peer pressure.In the present study,728 students were measured by Adolescent Risk-taking Questionnaire,s-EMBU,the Youth Future Orientation Questionnaire(Chinese version)and the Peer Pressure Questionnaire.SPSS 22.0 and macro program PROCESS were used for statistical analysis.The main results were as follows:(1)Parents’ positive parenting style was negatively correlated with adolescents’ problem behavior and positively correlated with adolescents’ socially approved risk-taking behavior;parents’ negative parenting style was positively correlated with adolescents’ problem behavior and negatively correlated with adolescents’ socially approved risk-taking behavior.(2)Future orientation played a mediating role in the relationship between parenting style and adolescent problem behavior,and in the relationship between parenting style and socially acceptable risk-taking behavior.(3)Positive peer pressure played a moderating role in the second half of the indirect effect of positive parenting style on adolescents’ problem behavior through career future orientation,when adolescents with low career future orientation and low positive peer pressure took the most risk-taking behavior;As for the indirect process of parenting style influencing adolescents’ problem behavior through educational future orientation,and the indirect process of parenting style influencing adolescents’ socially approved risk-taking behavior through educational future orientation,the moderated mediation model was not established.In a word,parenting style could directly affect adolescents’ risk-taking behavior,and it could also affect adolescents’ risk-taking behavior through the mediating role of future orientation.Positive peer pressure moderated this process to a certain extent.To reduce the occurrence of problem behaviors,we can improve the level of adolescents’ future orientation and guide them to make friends with peers of good quality.