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The Relationship Between Parenting Styles Practiced By Grandparents And Children’s Emotional And Behavioral Problems

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Abstract

Objectives

To examine the relationship between grandparenting styles and grandchildren’s emotions and behaviors, while controlling for parenting styles, and to compare the effects of grandparenting styles and parenting styles on children’s behavioral problems in China.

Methods

A sample of 765 children, with a mean age of 12.02 years (SD = 0.38), participated in this cross-sectional study in Jintan city, Jiangsu province, China. All participants completed the self-report measures of emotions and behaviors, grandparenting styles, and sociodemographic variables.

Results

Results showed that the well-recognized parenting styles (Care, Indifference, Overprotection, and Autonomy), when implemented by grandparents (grandparenting styles) and parents (parenting styles), had different patterns of effects on children’s emotional and behavioral problems. Grandparenting styles, especially grandparental Care and Overprotection, were positively related to emotional and behavioral problems, while parental Care was negatively related to children’s externalizing behaviors.

Conclusions

These results highlight the importance of grandparenting styles in grandchildren’s development. Practitioners working with grandparents and grandchildren need to recognize the complexity of grandparent-grandchild relationships and implement suitable interventions to meet the family needs.

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Acknowledgements

Thanks are extended to the participating children and their families from Jintan City, and to the Jintan Cohort Study Group. We are very grateful to the Jintan city government and the Jintan Hospital for their support and assistance.

Authors’ contributions:

J.L. designed the study and led the data collection. Y.L. conducted the data analysis and developed the initial draft of the manuscript. H.T.K. assisted with literature search and contributed in later revisions. All authors contributed to interpretation of data, were involved in the development of manuscript and approved the final submitted manuscript.

Funding

This work was supported by the National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences and the National Institutes of Health (K01-ES015877, K02-ES-019878, and R01-ES-018858).

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  1. Shandong University School of Nursing, Jinan, Shandong, China

    Yuli Li & Naixue Cui

  2. University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Hui Ting Kok, Janet Deatrick & Jianghong Liu

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee from both the University of Pennsylvania and the Ethical Committee for Research at Jintan Hospital in China, as well as with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Li, Y., Cui, N., Kok, H.T. et al. The Relationship Between Parenting Styles Practiced By Grandparents And Children’s Emotional And Behavioral Problems. J Child Fam Stud 28, 1899–1913 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-019-01415-7

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