Parenting discrepancies in the aggregate parenting context and positive child outcomes in Chinese parent-child dyads

Although past research has corroborated the harmful effects of parent–child discrepancies in parenting on child development, they tended to either treat these discrepant effects as independent of the general and aggregate family context where both parents and children construct and share mutually, and/or seldom examined those positive child outcomes as the consequence. To fill these gaps, the present study attempted to examine effects of parent–child discrepancies in effective parenting practices on multiple positive child outcomes concomitantly, while taking the aggregate nature of effective parenting into account. The sample consists of 223 Chinese parent–child dyads, in which parents were the main caregivers and the children were aged between 14 to 21 years old. Consistent with prior findings, parent–child discrepant effects were adversely related to the positive child outcomes, but these effects were found to be substantially moderated by the aggregate nature of the parenting. Implications of the findings and future research directions are also discussed.