The Correlation Between Parenting Styles and Chinese College Students' Attitudes Toward Seeking Professional Psychological Help

Abstract

Prior studies have demonstrated that authoritarian parenting styles significantly influence attitudes toward seeking professional psychological help (ATSPPH). However, they did not investigate the effects of parenting styles' particular factors. This study surveys 152 Chinese university students to investigate the correlation between parenting styles and ATSPPH. This study correlates three parenting style factors, overprotective, emotional warmth, and rejection, with four factors, confidence, stigma tolerance, need, and openness, in ATSPPH. The results show a substantial negative correlation between ATSPPH and parental overprotection; overprotection is strongly negatively correlated with confidence in psychological experts, and overprotection is correlated negatively with openness. A considerable positive link exists between parental emotional warmth and ATSPPH, as well as between emotional warmth and confidence and between emotional warmth and openness. Parental rejection had a substantial inverse relationship with ATSPPH, a significant positive relationship with stigma tolerance, a significant inverse correlation with confidence, and a significant inverse correlation with openness. Regression analyses further indicate that parental rejection significantly predicted children's tolerance and openness to seeking professional psychological help.