BECE. Newsletter 

Vol.12, No.2, 2022 1660 

 

 

 

 

Negative Parenting Styles and Preschoolers’ Social 

Adaptation Difficulties: The Mediating Effect of 

Parent-Child Conflicts 

By Liang, Z. B., Wu, A. L., & Zhang, G. Z. 
Correspondence to: Zongbao Liang, Southeast University, China. E-mail: 

lzb@seu.edu.cn  

HILDREN’S social adaptation is a manifestation of the level of their 

socialization. Positive social adaptation is represented by qualities such 

as pro-activeness, sensitivity, cooperation, and popularity among peers in 

children’s social interaction. Social adaptation difficulties include externaliz-

ing behavior problems like anger and aggression and internalizing ones such 

as anxiety and withdrawal. Childhood social adaptation problems can impose 

negative influences on individuals’ future development.  

The parenting style is an integration of parents’ values, attitudes, and 

behavior in child rearing, working on children in three dimensions: warmth 

and caring, behavioral discipline, and phycological control. In early child-

hood, children learn by simulating the words and actions of their parents. The 

language, behaviors, and responses delivered by parents in the process of 

child upbringing directly affect the development of social skills of children in 

the early years. Negative parenting behavior will induce social adaptation 

difficulties in young children. 

This study constructed a model of the relationships between negative 

parenting behavior, child-parent conflicts, and child social adaptation diffi-

culties, to analyze: (i) the father vs. mother differences in the impact of nega-

tive parenting behavior on child social adaptation; (ii) the mediating effect of 

child-parent conflicts on the relation between negative parenting styles and 

child social adaptation difficulties.  

Through cluster sampling, 446 second-year kindergarteners and their 

parents were selected as subjects from 6 kindergartens (including one com-

munity, one bilingual, two private, and two public kindergartens) in X City. 

In the first year of the study, the Child-Rearing Practices Report Q-Sort and 

the Child-Parent Relationship Scale were utilized to investigate parents’ rear-

ing behavior and the child-parent relationships among subjects. The Social 

Competence and Behavior Evaluation Scale, SCBE-30 was employed to as-

sess children’s social adaptation in the following year. 

C 

mailto:lzb@seu.edu.cn


 

Vol.12, No.2, 2022 1661 

The research findings demonstrate that negative parenting behavior of 

fathers and mothers can both positively predict children’s anger and aggres-

sion, and besides, the negative parenting behavior of mothers also positively 

predicts children’s anxiety and withdrawal, indicating that it has a wider ad-

verse influence than that of fathers; and that father-son conflicts can mediate 

the relation between the negative parenting behavior of the father and chil-

dren’s anger and aggression, while mother-son conflicts can mediate the rela-

tionship between negative parenting behavior of the mother and children’s 

anxiety and withdrawal as well as anger and aggression. Therefore, to im-

prove children’s social adaptation, parents should be mindful of the impact of 

their rearing behavior and parent-child relationships on the development of 

their preschool kids; avoid negative parenting practices such as threatening 

and coercion, verbal abuse and corporal punishment, overinvolvement and 

overprotection, etc.; and secure close parent-child relationships. 

 

Source: Studies in Preschool Education,2022;2022(03):43-52.