The Relationships Between Parental Psychological Aggression And Children’s Internalizing Problem: The Moderating Role Of Children’s Friend Satisfaction And Parental Marital Satisfaction

Parental psychological aggression is one of the most common forms of parental harsh discipline that the majority of children have experienced in both Western and Eastern countries.According to Straus and Field(1998),parental psychological aggression involves a psychological or emotional rejection to children by the verbal or symbolic forms of aggressive behavior from their parents.However,most of the studies have primarily focused on the effects of parental corporal punishment,and the potential risks posed to children who are exposed to parental psychological aggression have received scant attention.Despite the scarce,previous research have found that psychological aggression was the most unique predictor of children’s psychological outcome(e.g.,anxiety/depression,withdrawal).Most prior research has focused primarily on the effects of parenting on children’s development(parent-driven effects),however,with the developing of theory and research,some of the research also found that parental behaviors can be affected by children’s problem behaviors(child-driven effects).According to the bidirectional theory of parent-child relationships,the relations between parental psychological aggression and children’s internalizing problem may be bidirectional and reflect a reciprocal process of mutual influence.In addition,although previous research has explored the reciprocal relations between them in Western countries,research into this issue is still rare in China.Therefore,one of the purposes of present study is to investigate the relationships between parental psychological aggression and children’s internalizing behavior under the background of Chinese culture based on longitudinal study.Besides,there is a dearth of literature examining the moderating mechanism underlying the mutual influence between the two of them.Hence,another purpose of the present study is to explore the moderating mechanism between parental psychological aggression and children’s internalizingbehavior based on prior research.Given the current situations of our country that parental value and ideological has been changing and some of the fathers have become more actively engaged in the interactions with their children,and previous research investigating the reciprocal relations between them has primarily included only mothers or has reported the combined data from mothers and fathers,ignoring fathers’ effect on children’s development to some extent.The present study intends to explore both mothers’ and fathers’ potential influence on children via separately investigating the relationships between mothers’ and fathers’ psychological aggression and children’s internalizing problem behavior and the underlying moderating effects.The current study used a longitudinal design with a sample of 672 intact families with elementary-school children.And the Chinese version of the Parent–Child Conflict Tactics Scales(CTSPC),the Child Behavior Check-List(CBCL),the Multidimensional Student’s Life Satisfaction Scale(MSLSS),and the Marital Adjustment Test(MAT)were respectively used to collecte data of parental psychological aggression,children’s internalizing problem behavior,children’s friend satisfaction and parental marital satisfaction,for the purpose of investigating the relationships between both mothers’ and fathers’ psychological aggression and children’s internalizing problem behavior and their moderating effects.The main findings of the current study were as follows:1 There were no significant differences between children’s grades for both mothers’ and fathers’ psychological aggression,but there were significant differences between children’s gender for both mothers’ and fathers’ psychological aggression.Specifically,boys experienced higher levels of parental psychological aggression than girls.2 There were significant differences between children’s grades for children’s internalizing problem behavior,but there were no significant differences between children’s gender for children’s internalizing problem behavior.Specifically,children with higher grades indicated higher level of internalizing problem behavior than children with lower grades.3 The results did not provide support for reciprocal relationships betweenparental psychological aggression and children’s internalizing problem.Specifically,after taking into account the continuity in parental psychological aggression and children’s internalizing problem behavior over time and the concurrent relations between parental psychological aggression and children’s internalizing problem behavior,only maternal psychological aggression predicted greater children’s internalizing problem behavior in the next year(mother-driven effects).4 Children’s friend satisfaction moderated the effect of both mothers’ and fathers’ psychological aggression on children’s internalizing problem behavior.Specifically,the higher levels of children’s friend satisfaction exacerbated the effects of both mothers’ and fathers’ psychological aggression on children’s internalizing problem behavior one year later.5 Parental marital satisfaction moderated the effect of children’s internalizing problem behavior on mothers’ psychological aggression one year later,however,parental marital satisfaction did not moderated the effect of children’s internalizing problem behavior on fathers’ psychological aggression one year later.In specific,the higher levels of maternal marital satisfaction relieved the negative effects of children’s internalizing problem behavior on mothers’ psychological aggression.