Parental Rejection And Psychological Adjustment In Children And Adolescents: The Moderating Role Of Spouse's Acceptance

Psychological adjustment is the individual keep balance in the constant changes by their self-regulation system. Psychological adjustment as an important aspect of the child and adolescent mental health, it has been widely concerned by domestic and foreign researchers. There are many factors that can affect psychological adjustment in children and adolescents. Especially, Parents' parenting behavior is a significant factor. According to the PARTheory, parental rejection has negative and noticeable role on psychological adjustment in children and adolescents. However, from the existing research, most researchers only examined paternal or maternal parenting behavior(such as maternal acceptance), or only examined one parenting behavior of both parents(such as parental acceptance). However, a few have analyzed data from parental acceptance and rejection. Therefore, the present study examined the characteristics of acceptance and rejection for fathers and mothers separately. What's more, based on family systems theory and ecological systems theory, we further explored whether spouse's acceptance moderate the relationship between parental rejection and psychological adjustment in children and adolescents.The present study used a cross-sectional design, and the panticipants were 531 children and adolescents' fathers and mothers recruited from one nine-year school in Binzhou, Shandong Province. Both fathers and mothers completed the Chinese version of Parental Acceptance-Rejection Questionnaire(PARQ) and The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire(SDQ). The main conclusions of the study were as follows:1. Maternal acceptance level was significantly higher than paternal acceptance level. There were significant gender differences between maternal acceptance and paternal acceptance, the primary school children's parental acceptance level were higher than junior middle school adolescents'. No significant students' gender differences were found between maternal acceptance and paternal acceptance. Therewere no significant students' gender and age group differences in maternal rejection and paternal rejection.2. Gender and age group differences were found in the psychological adjustment level of children and adolescents. Boys had more hyperactivity-inattention than girls.The primary school children had higher prosocial behavior, hyperactivity-inattention and emotional symptom than junior middle school adolescents.3. Paternal acceptance / maternal acceptance was positively correlated with children and adolescents' prosocial behavior, and negatively correlated with conduct problem and hyperactivity-inattention, but not correlated with emotional symptom;Paternal rejection / maternal rejection was negatively correlated with children and adolescents' prosocial behavior, but positively correlated with emotional symptom,conduct problem and hyperactivity-inattention.4. Paternal acceptance significantly moderated the influence of maternal rejection upon prosocial behavior / conduct problem in children and adolescents; but maternal acceptance couldn't significantly moderate the influence of paternal rejection upon psychological adjustment in children and adolescents.