The Relation of Parenting Style and Meaning in Life among Village Middle School Students: The Chain Mediating Effects of Psychological Resilience and Perceived Social Support

Abstract

Meaning in life serves as a crucial indicator of adolescents' mental health. To investigate the connection between parenting style and this sense of meaning, along with the impacts of psychological resilience and perceived social support, we recruited 2121 junior high school students aged 12-16 from 24 schools in southern China. These students self-reported on their parenting style, sense of meaning in life, psychological resilience, and level of perceived social support. The results showed psychological resilience and perceived social support have chain mediating role between warm parenting styles and meaning in life. However psychological resilience and perceived social support have masking effects between parental rejection and meaning in life. Under the influence of psychological resilience and perceived social support, both emotionally warm parenting styles and rejecting parenting styles significantly positively predicted the sense of meaning in life. Therefore, although different parenting styles of parents have diverse impacts on life meaning of middle school students, individuals' adaptability to the environment and good understanding of social support would improve the negative effects of poor parenting styles in a certain extent.