A Comparative Study On The Different Effect Of Fathers’ And Mothers’Parenting On Internet Addiction

Studies find significant correlation between parenting and internet addiction. Meanwhile, parenting has been proved tobe a important cause of the internet addiction by regression analysis. But all of these studies give a limited explanation about the mechanism of the effect of parenting on internet addition. No results about the different roles of fathers’and mothers’parenting on internet addiction have been seen, either.Social anxiety is a important feature of internet addiction. The compensatory hypothesis of internet use emphasizes that unsatisfied need in real life can be a great force for people to use the internet. Social anxiety and unsafety attachment styles, which are closely related to internet addiction, represent two important unsatisfied need. As being different in gender roles, fathers and mothers have different parenting styles, and which, play different roles in children’s development. Take account of these differences, the current study explore the effect of different aspect of father’s and mother’s parenting on children’s internet addiction. Meanwhile, the specific mechanism of these effects are explored, taking social anxiety and attachment as possible mediating variables.The first study focuses on the different aspects of fathers’and mothers’parenting that result in children’s internet addiction. Two questionnaires, Jiangjiang’s short version of the EMBU and Young’s LAD, are used to collect data from483college students of Central China Normal University. Regression analysis is conduct. In the second study, the mechanism of internet addiction affected by parenting is explored by using SEM. Two questionnaires used in study1and two more questionnaires, Leary’s IAS and Zhang Jianxin’s Adolescent Attachment Inventory, are filled-in by977college students from Wuhan City.Main results of these two studies are as follows:(1) Fathers and mothers show great differences in their parenting styles. Specifically, mothers have higher scores in all three dimension of the s-EMBU questionnaire than fathers. Participants from the addiction group have higher scores in refusing and overprotection than those of the control group.(2) Father’s overprotection and emotional warmth can positively and negatively result in children’s internet addiction. Mothers’can result in children’s internet addiction.(3) Results from the path analysis show that father’s and mother’s negative parenting styles lead to children’s internet addiction in different ways. Unsafe attachment style plays a completely mediating role in the relation between father’s negative parenting and internet addiction. However, the affection of mothers’negative parenting on internet addiction is partially mediated by unsafe attachment style. Meanwhile, social anxiety is a partial mediator between unsafe attachment style and internet addiction.