The influence of psychological control in parenting on children

Abstract

A large amount of literature suggests that all aspects of children’s live will be impacted by excessive parental psychological control, and this paper finds that excessive parental psychological control has an impact on children's peer relationships, family relationships, and adolescent maladjustment. In particular, when parents do not exert psychological control over their adolescents, the adolescents may become involved in drugs and substance abuse as a result of low-quality peer relationships. In addition, this paper focuses on the fact that Chinese families have stronger psychological control than Western families, and that there are bidirectional effects of psychological control in the Chinese family samples. The results discussed in this paper may provide direction for future research, as psychological control is stronger in the Chinese sample and has bidirectional effects.