The Effect of Parenting on Adolescent’s Dual Filial Piety: A Mediation Analysis

The purpose of this research is to investigate the critical mediators that mediate the effect of parenting on adolescent’s dual filial piety. Some research has found that the authoritative and authoritarian parenting would influence the formation of adolescent’s dual filial piety, and in this research, the author wanted to find out what’s the critical mediators that mediate the effect of authoritative and authoritarian parenting on adolescent’s dual filial piety, and adopted structural equation model (SEM) to analyze the data and validate the hypotheses.
Current research includes two studies, and the second study includes two substudies. Study 1 examined the effect of authoritative and authoritarian parenting styles on adolescent’s authoritarian filial piety. It was supposed that both the authoritative and authoritarian parenting have positive effect on adolescent’s authoritarian filial piety, and the effect of authoritative parenting on authoritarian filial piety is through adolescent’s committed compliance to parents, the effect of authoritarian parenting on authoritarian filial piety is through adolescent’s situational compliance to parents. Furthermore, the effect of committed compliance on authoritarian filial piety is presumed to be stronger than that of situational compliance on authoritarian filial piety. Results as follows: The authoritative parenting has significant positive effect on adolescent’s authoritarian filial piety, and the effect is completely mediated by adolescent’s committed compliance to parents. And the authoritarian parenting has somewhat significant positive effect on adolescent’s authoritarian filial piety, but the effect can’t be mediated by his/her situational compliance to parents anymore, because adolescent’s situational compliance has no effect on authoritarian filial piety. Finally, the effect of committed compliance on authoritarian filial piety is significant stronger than that of situational compliance on authoritarian filial piety.
Base on the results of study 1, there are some modifications in study 2. Due to the mixed measure of father and mother in study 1 would cause some problems and may be the reason that situational compliance has no effect on authoritarian filial piety, so in study 2, the effect of parenting on filial piety and associated mediators would be examined on father’s and mother’s side respectively. Study 2a is the replication of study1, furthermore, it was hypothesized that the effect of adolescent’s situational compliance on authoritarian filial piety exists only on father side, not on mother’s. The other hypotheses are the same as study 1 on both father and mother side and no further hypothesis about the difference between father side and mother side. As prediction, adolescent’s situational compliance to father significantly mediates the effect of paternal authoritarian parenting on his/her authoritarian filial piety, and the mediation effect of adolescent’s situational compliance to mother is not significant. Additionally, the other hypotheses are still supported as study 1 on both father and mother side: adolescent’s committed compliance to parent completely mediates the positive effect of authoritative parenting on authoritarian filial piety. And the effect of committed compliance on authoritarian filial piety is significant stronger than that of situational compliance on authoritarian filial piety.
Study 2b investigated the effect of the authoritative parenting on reciprocal filial piety and associated mediators. It was hypothesized that authoritative parenting has positive effect on adolescent’s reciprocal filial piety, and the effect is mediated by parent-child intimacy and adolescent’s gratitude to parents, and still no further hypothesis about difference between father side and mother side. Results as follows: the authoritative parenting has significant positive effect on adolescent’s reciprocal filial piety, and the effect is significant mediated by his/her gratitude to parents. And the mediation effect of parent-child intimacy is supported only in single mediator model, this is because parent-child intimacy has highly associated with adolescent’s gratitude to parents, no matter the target is father or mother has the same result. In this research, however, it is meant that parent-child intimacy dose not really has no mediating effect, its effect may exist in other form and cannot be recognized by the two-mediator model.
Finally, the conclusion was made base on results, and some limitations, contributions and future direction were discussed.