Parental autonomy support, grit, and psychological adjustment in Chinese adolescents from divorced families.

Abstract

A large body of research has shown that parental divorce is linked to youths' psychological adjustment in Western societies, but less is known about how this life event may impact on adolescents living in the Chinese cultural context, which highlights losing face and dignity. The current study aimed to examine the relationship between parental autonomy support and psychological adjustment in middle to late adolescents from divorced and intact families in China, postulating moderation by grit. Participants were 210 adolescents (67.1% girls) from divorced families and 420 adolescents (58.6% girls) from intact families, aged between 14 and 18 years, who completed a questionnaire survey. Results indicated that adolescents from divorced families reported more problem behavior and less prosocial behavior than their peers from intact families. In regression analyses, grit moderated the association between parental autonomy support and prosocial behavior. Specifically, gritty adolescents were engaged in more prosocial activities than their nongritty peers when autonomy support was high. Furthermore, adolescents from divorced families fared less well when autonomy support was low. Chinese families may benefit from interventions focusing on the enhancement of both parental autonomy support and adolescents' self-regulatory skills to boost psychological adjustment in postdivorce settings.

The Associations of Parental Harsh Discipline, Adolescents’ Gender, and Grit Profiles With Aggressive Behavior Among Chinese Early Adolescents

“…As for Chinese early adolescents, Lan and Moscardino (2019) found that, in the context of negative teacher-student relations, high levels of grit can promote Chinese early adolescents' school satisfaction and learning engagement. Indeed, highly embedded in Confucianism, Chinese culture emphasizes diligence and perseverance when facing setbacks and challenges (Lan et al, 2019a). Given these empirical findings and cultural characteristics, we proposed that grit may buffer against the association between parental harsh discipline and aggressive behavior in Chinese early adolescents.…”

“…From a theoretical perspective, the development of aggressive behavior emerges from interactions among individual attributes and their environment (Bronfenbrenner, 1979;Jiménez and Estévez, 2017). Such an approach in the grit literature has been documented in many recent findings (e.g., Lan et al, 2019a;Lan and Radin, 2019). Statistically, given the nature of cross-sectional research design, conducting mediation analyses is not recommended, as it yields inherently misleading results (Maxwell and Cole, 2007).…”

Moderating role of social support in the relationship between posttraumatic stress disorder and antisocial behavior in adolescents after the Ya'an earthquake

“…Antisocial behavior was measured by the subscale of the Achenbach's Youth Self–Report version of the Child Behavior Checklist (Achenbach & Edelbrock, ), in which items are reworded in first person. This subscale has shown good test–retest reliability and criterion validity among Chinese adolescents (Lan, Marci, & Moscardino, ; Zhao, ; Zhao & Liu, ). The subscale includes nine items that measure aggressive behavior (e.g., “physically attacks people”), rule‐breaking behavior (e.g., “breaks rules at home, school, or elsewhere”), and cheating behavior (e.g., “lying or deceiving others”).…”

The Moderating Role of Social Identity and Grit in the Association Between Parental Control and School Adjustment in Chinese Middle School Students

“…As documented by recent findings (e.g., Li and Lamb, 2015), Chinese parents now exhibit sizable warmth and autonomy support during parent-child interactions. Although parental control may be still considered one of the most common parenting styles in the Chinese society, it seems undeniable that parents have started to be more engaged and supportive of autonomy in daily child-rearing, and they often have to negotiate with their children in terms of personal goals and willingness (Li and Lamb, 2015;Lan et al, 2019b). Given these dramatic sociocultural and economic advances, we expected that parental control might have been negatively linked to students' school adjustment (Hypothesis 1).…”

“…Although it is still a highly debated issue concerning the differential roles of these two dimensions on students' development, findings from a recent review (Credé et al, 2017) and the validation of the grit scale in a collective society (Datu et al, 2016) have supported the assertion that the construct of grit mainly focuses on perseverance of effort instead of consistency of interests. Moreover, perseverance and diligence are highly emphasized in the context of Chinese culture (Li et al, 2018;Lan et al, 2019b), and a persistent display of willpower in the face of difficulty is often regarded as a valuable individual characteristic. Given these empirical and cultural considerations, the current study explored the moderating role of grit in the association between parental control and school adjustment by focusing on perseverance only.…”