Peer-reviewed article
A dual-approach analysis of parenting styles and their differential impact on proactive and reactive aggression in Chinese adolescents.
Fung ALC, Zhou W ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This study examined how different parenting styles and behaviours are associated with aggression in Chinese adolescents in Hong Kong. Researchers classified 1,300 adolescents into groups based on aggressive behaviour (non-aggressive, reactive, proactive, or both) and compared parenting approaches across these groups. The findings show that authoritarian and permissive parenting, physical punishment, and harsh discipline are most strongly linked to aggression, with different patterns for reactive versus proactive aggression.
Key points
- Adolescents with any form of aggression experienced more maladaptive parenting patterns than non-aggressive peers
- Permissive parenting, physical coercion, and non-reasoning/punitive discipline were the most consistent positive correlates of both reactive and proactive aggression
- Proactive aggression was most strongly associated with low levels of positive parenting (warmth, acceptance, reasoning)
- Co-occurring reactive-proactive aggression showed the highest levels of negative parenting dimensions
- Specific parenting behaviours explained aggression better than broad parenting style labels
Limitations
This is a cross-sectional study, so it cannot establish whether parenting causes aggression or whether aggressive adolescents elicit different parenting responses. The study relies on self-reported and parent-reported questionnaires, which may be subject to bias, and findings are specific to Chinese adolescents in Hong Kong.
Abstract
Background While parenting style is a well-established correlate of adolescent aggression, prior research has rarely compared specific parenting behaviours across distinct proactive and reactive aggression profiles. The present study addressed this gap by integrating specific parenting behaviours and proactive and reactive aggression within both subgroup-based and variable-centred analytic frameworks. Methods A total of 1,300 Chinese adolescents and their parents from four middle schools in Hong Kong completed questionnaires. Adolescents were classified into non-aggressive, reactive, proactive, and co-occurring reactive-proactive groups using a composite classification based on standardized parent- and self-reported aggression scores. Parenting was assessed at both the global style level (authoritative, authoritarian, and permissive) and the behaviour level (warmth and acceptance, reasoning and induction, democratic participation, physical coercion, verbal hostility, and non-reasoning or punitive discipline). Subgroup-based multivariate analyses of covariance were conducted to compare parenting patterns across aggression groups, followed by hierarchical regression models predicting proactive and reactive aggression from parenting variables. Results Subgroup-based analyses showed that, compared with non-aggressive adolescents, aggression groups generally experienced more maladaptive parenting patterns, especially higher authoritarian and permissive parenting. The proactive group reported the lowest levels of positive parenting, whereas the co-occurring reactive-proactive group showed the highest mean levels on several negative parenting dimensions, although overlap among aggression groups remained substantial. Variable-centred analyses further showed that parenting explained substantially more variance in parent-reported than in self-reported aggression. Across parent-reported models, permissive parenting, physical coercion, and non-reasoning or punitive discipline emerged as the most consistent positive correlates of both reactive and proactive aggression. Conclusions Together, these findings suggest that parenting-aggression associations are overlapping but not uniform across adolescent aggression profiles. Compared with broad parenting styles, behaviour-level indicators provided a more specific account of the parenting practices associated with aggression. These results identify potentially modifiable family correlates that may help guide future longitudinal and intervention research on adolescent aggression.