Background Left-behind children refer to those rural children who are under 18 years of age and

No abstract

The present study aimed to examine the reciprocal relationship between parental psychological control and students’ academic functioning in urban China. Participants were 731 Chinese high school students in grade 10 (356 boys; Mage = 15.64 years, SD = 0.68). Two waves of 1‐year longitudinal data were collected using student reports of parental psychological control and academic‐related beliefs, strategies, and behaviours. Results showed that parental psychological control at Time 1 significantly triggered an increase in students’ maladaptive academic functioning at Time 2; and students’ adaptive academic functioning at Time 1 significantly predicted parental psychological control at Time 2. Limitations of the present study and implications for practice are discussed. What is already known on this subject? According to self‐determination theory, parental psychological control has been found to be harmful on students’ academic learning in Western societies. We know little about the relation between parental psychological control and academic functioning (adaptive vs. maladaptive) in Eastern societies such as China. What does this study add? Parental psychological control increased maladaptive academic functioning, and adaptive academic functioning decreased parental psychological control, suggesting a more fluid, dynamic parenting–child interaction over time. The predicted relations between parental psychological control and academic functioning of high school students hold across gender. More urbanized adolescents had a high tendency to perceive their parents as psychological controlling, suggesting a change in culture regarding the importance of personal autonomy for more urbanized adolescents.

We investigated whether and how adolescents' perceived parental psychological control and autonomy support influence their maladaptive academic functioning through their achievement goal orientations. Participants were 845 tenth-grade students (447 boys, Mage = 15.20 ± 0.54 years; 398 girls, Mage = 15.13 ± 0.47 years) in China. Data were collected on their reported achievement goal orientations, perceived parental psychological control and autonomy support, and academic-related beliefs, strategies, and behaviors. Bootstrapping with resampling strategies was used for testing multiple mediators' model and examining mediation effect. Results indicated that, compared with girls, adolescent boys perceived higher parental psychological control. Moreover, we found distinct effects of parental psychological control and autonomy support on adolescents' maladaptive academic functioning through achievement goal orientations. Specifically, parental psychological control led to adolescents' maladaptive academic functioning, mainly through adolescents' performance-approach goal orientation ( . The results suggest that adolescents will benefit from parents ameliorating maladaptive academic functioning through fostering MASs and be harmed from parents facilitating maladaptive academic functioning through enhancing performance-approach and PAVs.

No abstract