Abstract
Background:
Adolescents often carry their depression well into their adulthood. This creates perpetual difficulties for their family and society. Research on the relationship between positive parenting and adolescent depressive symptoms is rare. The protective effect of positive parenting on adolescent depressive symptoms also remains underexplored. Parents are a vital source of feedback that shapes adolescents’ self-view in crucial ways.
Aims:
This study examines the latent relationships between four factors related to positive parenting and adolescent depressive symptoms.
Method:
Using data from the Chinese Family Panel Studies (CFPS), Stata MP 17.0 was used for preliminary data processing and descriptive statistics. The structural equation model (SEM) was adopted to test the seven proposed hypotheses.
Results:
The study participants were 2,816 adolescents (52.34% male). The SEM showed that positive communication and parental praise can directly reduce depressive symptoms in adolescents (path coefficients of −0.24 and −0.13 [p < .001], respectively). Additionally, both positive communication and positive parent-adolescent interactions can reduce adolescents’ depressive symptoms by heightening the intermediate factor of parental praise (path coefficients of 0.30 and 0.44 [p < .001], respectively). Conversely, positive parent-adolescent interactions did not negatively affect adolescents’ depressive symptoms, as we hypothesized.
Conclusions:
High level of positive parenting negatively predicts the level of depressive symptoms among adolescents. Specifically, positive communication, positive parent-adolescent communication, and parental praise are the main protective factors related to positive parenting for adolescents’ depressive symptoms.
Introduction
Depressive disorders include a wide range of categories; a shared feature of all such disorders is ‘the presence of sad, empty, or an irritable mood, accompanied by somatic and cognitive changes’(Wang & Jiao, 2022). Adolescence is a period that is susceptible to depression (Ellis et al., 2017; Solomon-Krakus et al., 2017) because adolescents face greater challenges and stressors caused by tasks related to physical, psychological, and social development in his period (Hammen, 2009). In China, the prevalence of depressive symptoms in children and adolescents ranges from 4% to 41%, with a pooled prevalence of 19.85% (Rao et al., 2019). Depressive symptoms entail a higher risk of suicide (Thapar et al., 2012), poorer academic performance (Verboom et al., 2014), higher levels of substance abuse (Scholes-Balog et al., 2015), and poorer self-reported social well-being (Verboom et al., 2014). Moreover, it may persist into the later stages of life and result in continued difficulties for the family and society (Clayborne et al., 2019; World Health Organization, 2020). Recently, the Chinese government implemented the Healthy China Action Plan (2019–2030) and the Healthy China Action Plan—Children and Adolescents’ Mental Health Plan (2019–2022) (National Health Commission of the People’s Republic of China, 2019a, 2019b). Given the adverse impact of adolescent depression and background of national policy orientation, it is essential to identify the potential protective factors of adolescents’ depressive symptoms, so that depression can be intervened into and prevented in a targeted way.
Dysfunctional families make adolescents more vulnerable to depression (Alloy et al., 2006; Freed et al., 2016). Although peer relationships become more prominent adolescence, parents still play a crucial role in adolescents’ growth (Steinberg & Morris, 2001). Numerous family-related factors, including aversive family environment (Sheeber et al., 2001), lower level of parental positivity (Yap et al., 2008), inappropriate parenting (Lu, 2019) as well as low-quality parent-child relationships (Spruit et al., 2020) have been found to increase adolescents’ depressive symptoms. Parenting style not only directly affects the mental health of adolescents, but it also has a lasting influence on the development of their personality and other psychological characteristics (Xiuqin et al., 2010). Much of the current research focuses on the negative effects of negative parenting on mental health conditions such as depression and anxiety, while few studies have examined the four components of support in learning, positive communication, positive parent-adolescent interactions, and parental praise as positive parenting, their effects on adolescents’ depressive symptoms, and their relationships with each other. Hence, this study utilizes data obtained from a national and representative sample of Chinese adolescents to explore the same and to enrich this field of study.
Literature Review and Hypotheses Development
Support in Learning
In China, Confucian collectivism and an exam-centered culture encourage parents to have high educational expectations for the children. Adolescents in China experience more stress than adolescents in Western countries (Sun et al., 2012). Parents generally give them material goods and teach them manners verbally, while knowledge education and intellectual development are usually the school’s responsibility. This, coupled with the test-based education, makes parents obsessed with adolescent’s scores while neglecting the support in learning. Parental support in learning, through warmth and interactive modeling, instead of a preachy and commanding tone of supervision, alleviates restlessness and anxiety. Moreover, it allows parents to acknowledge merits, such as hard work, bravery, and generosity, in their children, going beyond test scores. This consequently increases the expression of praise and makes adolescents feel that the parents are a part of their world. This study proposes the following hypotheses:
H1: Support in learning positively predicts parental praise.
H2: Support in learning negatively predicts depressive symptoms.
Communication
Positive parent-adolescent communication plays an important role in preventing adolescents’ depressive symptoms (Ioffe et al., 2020; Kapetanovic et al., 2020). High-quality communication can strengthen connectedness, intimacy, family cohesion, and family adaptability (Barnes & Olson, 1985; Cava et al., 2014; Laursen & Collins, 2004). It can provide emotional and instrumental support, which is associated with low levels of internalizing and externalizing problems in adolescents (Garthe et al., 2015; Hamza & Willoughby, 2011; Zhang et al., 2021). Positive parent-adolescent communication have a negative effect on early adolescent depressive symptoms (Zhang et al., 2021), which is consistent with previous findings in Western cultures (Ioffe et al., 2020; Kapetanovic et al., 2020). Positive parent-adolescent communication, like asking why a mistake was made and discussing the remedy with the adolescent as well as encouraging boldness and independent thought, enables parents to develop their children’s behavior more effectively, increasing parental praise for adolescents. Thus, the following hypotheses are proposed:
H3: Positive communication positively predicts parental praise.
H4: Positive communication negatively predicts depressive symptoms.
Parent-Adolescent Interaction
Parent-adolescent interaction is essential in promoting adaptive emotional, cognitive, and social development (Grumi et al., 2021). It is highly influential in the development of emotion regulation, throughout childhood and adolescence (Ratliff et al., 2021). Based on an interpersonal perspective, the ability to maintain intimate relationships would be compromised due to the loss of intimate connection with significant individuals, and it would increase susceptibility to depression. For most adolescents, parents are significant individuals. Evidence has shown that adolescent will be susceptible to suffer depression if parent-adolescent interactions are indifferent and negative (Liu, 2003). Besides, according to the dynamic systems theory (Kunnen, 2018; van der Gaag et al., 2019), development is a process that emerges from dynamic reciprocal exchanges between a child and his/her environment. Each positive interaction that parents have with their adolescent may carry over to the next one, acting as feedback, gradually carving out a family-specific developmental pathway for their relationship and affective well-being (Bülow et al., 2022). Positive parent-adolescent interaction, such as parents reading stories to their kids and playing with their kids, strengthens the bond and reliance between parents and adolescents. Thus, parents are more likely to praise adolescents during positive interactions. Based on this, the following hypotheses are proposed:
H5: Positive parent-adolescent interaction predicts parental praise.
H6: Positive parent-adolescent interaction negatively predicts depressive symptoms.
Parental Praise
Despite the increased emphasis on peer relationships during adolescence, teenagers are still concerned about what their parents think about them (Silk et al., 2017). Parental praise represents a social feedback and verbal reward, and it can develop a warm environment and promote attachment (Owen et al., 2012). It is associated with several elements of positive parenting, including supportiveness (Felson & Zielinski, 1989), warmth, and positive affect (Owen et al., 2012). Therefore, parental praise may be regarded as one aspect of positive parenting (Seay et al., 2014). Neurological evidence was provided by a study that examined the effects of maternal praise and criticism in a sample of adolescent girls. It found that greater depression and anxiety symptoms were associated with increased activation of the right amygdala in response to maternal criticism, while decreased activation of the right amygdala was associated with maternal praise responses (Aupperle et al., 2016). Few researches have focused on the protective effects of parental praise on adolescent depressive symptoms while more on negative effects of criticism. Consequently, this study considers parental praise as an intermediate variable and a protective factor for adolescent depressive symptoms. The following hypotheses are proposed:
H7: Parental praise negatively predicts depressive symptoms.
Considering the proposed hypotheses, Figure 1 shows the research model.
Research model.
Materials and Methods
Participants and Procedure
Data were retrieved from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS), which was funded by the Peking University and carried out by the Institute of Social Science Survey (ISSS) of Peking University (Xie & Hu, 2014). The CFPS collects data through personal visits (data recorded via computer-assisted personal interviewing technology) on the individual (children and adults separately), family, and community levels across 25 provinces in China, covering 95% of the Chinese population (excluding Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan). This study used the data collected in 2020, which was the newest data we could obtain. According to the WHO’s definition of adolescents, we selected individuals aged 10 to 19 years from the respondents who completed the full 8-question version of the Center for Epidemiology Studies Depression (CES-D) questionnaire and the selected 13 questions of positive parenting. We screened 3,360 adolescents aged 10 to 19 years from among 28590 respondents. After eliminating 229 and 315 respondents with missing values in depressive symptoms and positive parenting-related factors, respectively, our final sample comprised 2,816 participants.
The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by Peking University Biomedical Ethics Committee (Approval number: IRB00001052-14010). Written informed consent was submitted by the participants’ legal guardian, thus separate ethical approval was not required for this study.
Measures
Positive Parenting
The CFPS used the Parenting Bonding Instrument (PBI) to assess the parenting style in 2020. One item (i.e. ‘My parents criticized me’) from the original 14-item scale was dropped owing to its non-significant effect on the latent construct of parental care (Yu et al., 2014) and it is contrary to positive parenting. Therefore, the remaining 13-item scale was used as an instrument to assess positive parenting in this study. Based on the content of the ‘CFPS Followup Questionnaire 2020’ and our literature review, this instrument was divided into four variables consisting of four aspects of positive parenting (Table 1). Answers were scaled on a 5-point Likert scale (0 = never, 1 = hardly, 2 = sometimes, 3 = often, 4 = always). Higher scores indicate a higher level of positive parenting.
Variables of positive parenting.
Depressive Symptoms
The Center for Epidemiology Scale for Depression (CES-D) is presently regarded as a practical depressive symptoms screening tool, which has been validated and widely used by studies targeting Chinese adolescents(Chi et al., 2020; Yang et al., 2018). In the 2020 CFPS, the CES-D-8, consisting of two positive items (‘I was happy’ and ‘I enjoyed life’) and six negative questions (‘I felt depressed’, ‘I felt that everything I did was an effort’, ‘My sleep was restless’, ‘I felt lonely’, ‘I felt sad’, and ‘I could not get going’), was used to assess adolescent depressive symptoms. This version of scale has good reliability and validity in China (Nan et al., 2023; Zhang, 2022), and in this study, Cronbach’s α was.96. Each positive item is scored from 0 (never) to 3 (almost every day) and two negative items are scored on a scale from 3 (never) to 0 (almost every day). In total, an overall score ranging from 0 to 24 was aggregated, with higher scores indicating greater depressive symptoms.
The classification of depressive symptoms might differ across countries and populations. When using the standard 20-item CES-D scale, Radloff (1977) suggested a score of 16 or the 80th percentile point as the threshold to indicate depressive symptoms. In this study, an 80th percentile (score of 8) of 8-item CES-D is used as the threshold to assess whether the participant having depressive symptoms or not. The output variable is CES-D-8 result, classified as ‘1’ depressive symptoms and ‘0’ non-depressive symptoms.
Statistical Analysis
SEM entails a multivariate analysis technique that provides an extensive toolbox for analyzing multivariable interrelationships between directly-observed variables and underlying structures (Rappaport et al., 2019). It allows the simultaneous analysis of the dependence relationship and interrelation of multiple variables. Moreover, it estimates direct effects mediated by other factors that integrate the causal network of outcomes of interest (Tavares et al., 2021). Given these advantages, this study aimed to establish a SEM to analyze the structural relationships between depressive symptoms and these four aspects of positive parenting among adolescents in China.
Stata MP 17.0 was used for preliminary data processing and descriptive statistics of the demographic variables and depressive symptoms. Amos version 17.0 was used to test the SEM concerning adolescents. The significance level of statistical analysis was .05.
Results
Descriptive Analysis
Out of the 2,816 adolescents, 52.34% were males and 56.21% came from rural areas.
The number of adolescents in each age group was more evenly distributed (Table 2).
Participants’ sociodemographic characteristics and depressive symptoms.
Missing value of 40.
SEM Testing Results
Figure 2 shows the SEM results. Maximum likelihood estimation was employed to calculate the goodness-of-fit indices, and after modifying the model,
SEM testing.
As shown in Table 3, the results indicated that five out of the seven hypothesized paths were significant. Communication and parental praise negatively predicted depressive symptoms. Among these two factors, the most important determinant of depressive symptoms was communication, as its path coefficient was −0.24 (p < .001). The influence of parental praise was less, with a path coefficient of −0.13 (p < .001).
Hypotheses testing.
Y = supported; N = not supported.
**p < .01. ***p < .001.
Positive communication and parent-adolescent interaction positively affected parental praise. The impact of positive parent-adolescent interaction was 0.44 (p < .001), and positive communication had a smaller significant impact, with a path coefficient of 0.30 (p < .001). Moreover, the path from parent-adolescent interaction to depressive symptoms, with a path coefficient of 0.14, was significant but contrary to the hypothesis.
Discussion
This study examined the relationship between four aspects of positive parenting and adolescent depressive symptoms in China while the most of remaining researches explored the effect of negative parenting on depressive symptoms. These findings showed that a high level of three aspects of positive parenting negatively predicts the levels of adolescent depressive symptoms and that these three aspects influence each other. Particularly, positive communication and parental praise negatively predict depressive symptoms among adolescents. Therefore, those two could be the protective factors that help alleviate depressive symptoms in adolescents. Besides, positive communication and positive parent-adolescent interactions can reduce adolescents’ depressive symptoms through the intermediate factor of parental praise. Positive communication and parental praise are the main protective factors for depressive symptoms. This study demonstrated the protective effect of parental praise on adolescent depressive symptoms, which could inspire researchers to pay more attention to parental praise. Furthermore, these findings may inspire increased support for adolescents through the mentioned protective factors, thereby reducing the prevalence of adolescent depressive symptoms.
As we hypothesized, positive communication positively predicts parental praise and negatively predicts depressive symptoms, which is consistent with the previous studies (Pinquart, 2017; Zhang et al., 2021). Adolescents may face more pressure with academic requirements and social relationships, increasing the risk of depressive symptoms (Ma et al., 2018; Verboom et al., 2014). According to Allen and Tan (2016), positive parent-child communication not only maintains the attachment bond between adolescents and their parents but also helps adolescents to deal with stress actively, reducing the possibility of depressive symptoms. Due to positive communication with parents, adolescents derive more guidance, involvement, and protection, which could prevent them from experiencing depressive symptoms (Hamza & Willoughby, 2011; Kapetanovic et al., 2020). It’s suggested that positive parent-adolescent communication helps in developing problem-solving and adaptive coping skills and also decreases the negative effects of stressful events among middle school students (Ioffe et al., 2020). Besides, it will increase self-efficacy and social skills, which are helpful for academic success (Hill & Roberts, 2019). Parents would observe progress in adolescent’s academic as well as social adjustment skills in positive communication, increasing the frequency of parental praise.
Positive parent-adolescent interactions positively predict parental praise, which is consistent with the family systems theory that family members are influenced by their interactions with each other (Bowen, 1966). When parents and adolescents have positive interactions, the positive emotions between them interact. Parents, as an important source of feedback for adolescents, provide positive feedback to adolescents and are more likely to praise them verbally and materially. Affect in positive interactions needs to be considered, as it orients toward social bonds and enhances the forming of positive relationships (Ramsey & Gentzler, 2015). Moreover, the way parents and adolescents interact with each other provides a crucial environment to learn how to deal with emotions (Bodner et al., 2018). Therefore, when parents and adolescents interact positively, parents sensed that their children are opening up to them and have positive emotions. This leads parents to provide positive feedback, thereby increasing praise for adolescents.
Parental praise negatively predicts depressive symptoms. This finding echoes some medical experiments (Aupperle et al., 2016; Bodner et al., 2018), suggesting that the quality of parent response not only affects adolescents’ emotional regulation but also psychopathology (Kerr et al., 2019). Through interpersonal interaction, adolescents acquire information about themselves from other individuals, particularly significant ones like parents. If the feedback they receive from those significant individuals is persistently negative, they are likely to form a negative self-perception, intensifying their vulnerability to depressive symptoms (Garber et al., 1997). On one hand, parental praise is usually rewarding, induces positive emotions as well as increases self-esteem, self-efficacy, and motivation (Brummelman & Thomaes, 2017; Jacquez et al., 2004; Owen et al., 2012). On the other hand, high level of positive parent emotion and emotion coaching proved to be associated with higher level of emotional regulation among adolescents (Cunningham et al., 2009; Hersh & Hussong, 2009). This suggested direct links between parents’ supportive emotional response and adolescents’ emotional regulation. Therefore, parental praise could be regarded as a spiritual reward, which can help adolescents manage their emotions appropriately and enhance their spiritual strength. Based on this finding, it’s highly suggested that parents praise adolescents as a positive expression of recognition and affirmation, which will increase their ability to manage emotions and mental strength in adversity.
Notably, the path, parent-adolescent interactions to depressive symptoms, was contrary to the hypothesis. This study showed the negative effect of positive parent-adolescent interactions on depressive symptoms, which is not consistent with the previous study (Morris et al., 2017). The present study suggests that adolescents usually strive for autonomy and independence from their parents (Steinberg et al., 2002), so they tend to interact with peers than parents. Therefore, frequent interactions with parents may instead cause adolescents to feel impatient and stressed, which may negatively affect depressive symptoms.
Limitations
This study has several limitations. First, despite the large national sample, this study only examined data from 1 year. To further investigate the developmental changes involved in the dynamic between positive parenting and adolescents; depressive symptoms, future research should study with many waves of data collection. Second, this study assessed depressive symptoms in a national sample. Given the heterogeneity of depressive disorders, future research should also examine how the relationships explored in this study differ across regions.
Conclusion
Positive parenting negatively predicts the level of depressive symptoms among adolescents. Specifically, positive communication, positive parent-adolescent communication, and parental praise are the main protective factors for adolescents’ depressive symptoms.
Footnotes
Data Availability Statement
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was sponsored by the National Social Science of China (grant number: 21BGL301), the National Social Science of China (grant number: 2022-SKJJ-C-033), the Shanghai Sailing Program (grant number: No.20YF1457900), Shanghai Rising-Star Program (grant number: No.22QA1411400).