The Relationships Between Parenting Styles And Children And Adolescents' School Adjustment In Rural China

A considerable volume of research in the extant literature revealed that parenting styles had significant implications on children and adolescents'school adjustment. At present, great differences existed between urban and rural China in economic, social and educational areas, and the research conducted in this field were almost with urban children and adolescents, therefore, present study explored the relationships between parenting styles and rural children and adolescents'emotion adjustment, behavior adjustment, peer relationship and academic achievement, with a sample of 907 students selected from three rural elementary schools and a rural junior middle school in Dezhou City, Shandong Province. The major findings were as follows:1 There were significant gender and age differences in subjects'parenting styles. As regards to fathers'severe punishment, negative rejection, excessive interference and excessive protection, and mothers'excessive interference and protection and preference, boys'scores are significantly higher than those of girls. Mothers had significantly more severe punishment on boys than on girls in primary schools. Mothers had more tender affection on adolescents than on children, fathers had more tender affection on non-only adolescents than on non-only children, and fathers had more excessive interference and protection on only children than on only adolescents.What's more, Fathers had more tender affection and excessive interference and protection on only children than on non-only children, while mothers had less negative rejection on only boys than on non-only boys.2 There were significant gender differences on rural children and adolescents'school adjustment. Particularly, the scores of boys were significantly lower than those of girls on social-leadership behavior, shyness-sensitivity behavior and academic achievement, while the scores of boys were significantly higher than girls on aggression and peer rejection.The total loneness scores of only children were significantly lower than those of non-only children. Only girls'shyness-sensitivity scores were significantly higher than those of non-only girls.3 As a whole, subjects'parenting styles were significantly correlated with their...