Relative Effects of Parenting Practices on Child Development in the Context of Family Processes

In the present study, two family socialisation constructs, family processes and parenting practices, were simultaneously investigated for their relative effects on the adolescent development of internalising and externalising problems. Data for analysis were collected from a sample of 223 Chinese parent-child dyads (mothers = 179, boys = 124; child mean age = 16.7, SD = 2.16), and hierarchical linear regression models were employed to examine the relationships. Results showed that both positive family processes and effective parenting practices were predictive of less internalising and externalising problems in children, but the former was more pronounced than the latter. More importantly, the robust predictive effects of parenting resumed after inclusion of the interaction term of parenting by family processes, which lends support to the conditionality of parenting with the moderating effect of family processes. This indicates that parenting functions are more important in the home environment with low positive family processes, and shows convergence in the family context of highly positive family processes. Implications of the findings for educational and human development practices and future research directions are also discussed.