Parental influences on children's social and overt aggression in China: Effects of parenting behavior, marital conflict, and parent-child attachment

This study examined three aspects of parental influences on Chinese children's overt and social aggression, specifically, parenting behaviors, martial conflict and parentchild attachment security. Participants were 671 3rd, 4th and 5th graders, 670 mothers and 570 fathers, and 20 teachers recruited from two elementary schools in China. Both peer nominations and teacher ratings were used to assess children's overt and social aggression. Structural Equation Modeling was used to examine the influences of these parental factors. All three aspects of parental influences were found to be associated with childhood aggression. Additionally, these associations were moderated by parent and child gender. Among the five parenting dimensions examined, coercive control and psychological control positively predicted children's overt and social aggression. As expected, encouragement of modesty showed inhibition effects on children's aggression. However, this finding only held for father-son dyads. Unlike hypothesized, paternal warmth and training positively predicted children's social aggression as reported by peers. Both overt and covert marital conflict positively predicted children's overt and social aggression. Girls' attachment security with mothers negatively predicted their overt aggression. Furthermore, the "spillover effect" of marital conflict on parenting behaviors and parent-child attachment was observed. Coercive and psychological control also mediated the positive associations between marital conflict and children's aggression. Implications of these results for our understanding of parental influences of childhood aggression in diverse cultural contexts are addressed.