The Impact Of Parenting Stress On Social Competence:The Role Of Parenting Style And Negative Emotionality

The development of young children’s social competence is an essential part of their socialization process and has a significant impact not only on their current development but also on their future social adaptation and behavioral development.Therefore,it is important to investigate the factors influencing the development of social competence in young children and the mechanisms of interaction among these factors.Family systems theory suggests that various subsystems in the family interact with each other to promote children’s development,in which the factors affecting children can be divided into proximal and distal family factors,and the distal family factors can act on children through the proximal family factors.Parenting stress,as one of the distal factors influencing young children’s development,not only has a direct negative impact on young children’s physical,mental,and social development,but also may have an indirect impact through proximal family factors.In view of this,this study intends to examine the influence of parenting stress on young children’s social competence development,to reveal the role of proximal family factors-parenting style and young children’s own factors-negative emotionality in the relationship between them,and to further improve the model of influencing factors on young children’s social competence.The purpose of this study is to further improve the model of the factors influencing the social competence of young children.Specifically,the purpose of this study is twofold:(1)to examine the role of parenting stress on young children’s social competence;and(2)to explore the complex mechanisms of the role of parenting style and young children’s negative affectivity in the relationship between parenting stress and young children’s social competence.The study subjects were 539 young children from two kindergarten classes in Jinan City.The social competence subscale of the Revised Short Form for Rating Social Competence and Behavior of Young Children by Liu Yu et al,the negative emotionality subscale of the Revised Chinese Short Version of the Child Behavior Questionnaire by Putnam and Rothbart,the Short Form of the Parenting Stress Questionnaire by Abidin,Revised by Wenxiang Ren,and the Parenting Styles and Dimensions Questionnaire by Robinson et al.The Parenting Styles and Dimensions Questionnaire by Robinson et al.measured social competence,negative emotions,parenting stress,and parenting styles.The questionnaires were administered to parents of young children.The findings of the study are as follows:(1)There were significant differences in social competence by age group and socioeconomic status,with children in the 4 and 5 year old groups scoring significantly higher than children in the 3 year old group,and children in the high socioeconomic status group scoring significantly higher than children in the middle and low socioeconomic status groups;there were no significant differences by gender or whether they were only children.(2)Mother’s parenting stress can directly and negatively predict children’s social competence,and can also indirectly predict children’s social competence through mother’s authoritative parenting;father’s parenting stress can not directly predict children’s social competence,but can indirectly and negatively predict children’s social competence through autocratic parenting.(3)The mediating model with moderation of toddler negative emotionality moderates the second half of the mediating mechanism by which maternal parenting stress affects toddler social competence through authoritative parenting holds.Specifically,maternal authoritative parenting had greater positive predictive power on the social competence of young children with low negative emotionality compared to those with high negative emotionality.