Parents' Religiosity, Family Socialization and the Mental Health of Children in Hong Kong: Do Raters Make a Difference?

Abstract

Family socialization is important for the development and well-being of children. However, few studies have investigated how parents' religiosity influences children's mental health through parental psychological health and family socialization. What's more important, prior family studies generally drew their conclusions by heavily relying on the perspective of either the parents or the offspring and considering family socialization as tantamount to parenting. The current study uses multi-informant perspectives of the parents or the children or average of the both to investigate the above mentioned relationships, and treats family socialization as a multi-faceted concept. The findings generally support the beneficial effects of parents' religiosity on their psychological health and family socialization, which in turn contribute to the mental health in children. To support its validity, the structural model is tested by different raters, which subsequently enhances personal receptivity theory. Contributions of the study and future research directions are also discussed.

Family Processes, Parenting Practices, and Psychosocial Maturity of Chinese Youths: A Latent Variable Interaction and Mediation Analysis

“…Authoritative parenting was found as a function of positive family processes, which are then predictive of Chinese youths’ psychosocial maturity. Therefore, it is plausible that parenting behavior acts as a crucial mediator to transit the effects of family relationships, the couple’s cohesion, marital intimacy, and other home interpersonal dynamics on youth development [ 13 , 51 ]. Thus, future longitudinal research can help answer the inquiry by comparing the effects of family processes and parenting practices on various youth outcomes and clarifying the mediating role of parenting behavior in the relationship between family socialization and youth development.…”

“…Less clear is how family processes and parenting practices concurrently contribute to youths’ psychosocial maturity [ 2 , 6 ]. Generally, family processes refer to the overall family climate, relational interactions, mutual support, interpersonal cohesion, and communications among family members, especially for parents, in the family realm [ 13 , 21 ]. Parenting practices denote direct parental guidance, instructions, rules, and standards set by parents for raising their children in the expected direction and life orientation they hope for [ 5 , 6 ].…”

“…The reverse is true for a disorganized home environment and conflicting family relationships that may adversely hamper parenting quality. Yeung and Chan [ 13 ] found that family processes significantly predicted authoritative parenting, both of which contributed to the mental health of their young children. Likewise, Valiente, Lemery-Chalfant, and Reiser [ 14 ] reported that a chaotic home climate and discordant family interactions directly contributed to poor parenting practices, due to fatigue and tension imposed on parents by suboptimal family processes.…”

“…Some research has reported that family processes set a socialization context in regulating the effects of parenting practices on youth development [ 7 , 12 ]. Furthermore, parenting practices are empirically found to be heavily affected by the function of family processes [ 13 , 14 ], denoting a possible mediating role in the relationship between family processes and youths’ psychosocial maturity. In sum, this study intends to investigate the way family processes and parenting practices, and their interaction commonly contribute to the psychosocial maturity of Chinese youths.…”

The Development of a Family Cohesion Scale: A Preliminary Validation

“…Family greatly influences the psycho-social and emotional growth and development of children (Saleem et al, 2015). Family has been studied as a risk and protective factor in mental health problems of children (Saleem et al, 2017;Yeung & Chan, 2016). Children living in a supportive and cohesive family environment likely to have emotional, social, academic, and psychological competence (Jhang, 2017;Lang, 2018;Lin & Yi, 2017).…”