Warmth and Control: Examining the Associations between Chinese Parenting Behaviors and Children’s Academic Performance in Different Parent-Child Dyads

Few studies have comprehensively examined the reciprocal relation between specific parenting practices and children’s academic performance across parent and child gender. The present study investigated the bidirectional associations between parental warmth/control and children’s academic performance using a three-wave longitudinal multi-informant design. A total of 814 families (M_{child age} = 10.36 years; SD = 1.22, 57% girls) participated in the study. Results of the random-intercept cross-lagged models indicated that paternal warmth promoted children’s academic performance at the between-family level, whereas maternal warmth promoted children’s academic performance at the within-family level. Interestingly, paternal control predicted better academic performance in boys over time (i.e., the within-family level) but contributed to girls’ worse academic performance than others (i.e., the between-family level). These results highlighted the gender-universal effects of parental warmth and the gender-specific effects of parental control on child academic performance in the Chinese context. These findings underscored the necessity of considering parent-child dynamics across different parent-child gender dyads.