In recent years, the Chinese population policy has been gradually relaxed with the development of economy and society. From the one-child policy, to the two-child policy, until now the third child policy comes onstage. Chinese family structures have undergone great changes as more and more families have more than one child. Consequently, some issues such as differential parenting style and sibling relationship have drawn increasing attention.
This research aimed to explore the association and mechanism between offspring-reported parental favoritism index and aggressive behavior, and the mediating roles of parental emotional warmth and sibling conflict. In addition, this research also explored the associations of parental differential treatment, parental emotional warmth, sibling conflict and aggression behavior. Instead of parent's report data, this study adopted children's self-reported Batas and based on family system theory, to explore the association of parental differential treatment, parental emotional warmth, sibling conflict and children's aggressive behavior.
In this study, totally 504 students from Grade 4-7 were recruited to complete the Differential Parental Treatment scale, Sibling Relationship scale, Parental Emotional Warmth scale and Buss-Perry Aggression Questionnaire (BPAQ). The results were as follows: (1) The correlation analysis showed that children's parental favoritism index, parental emotional warmth, sibling conflict and aggressive behavior were significantly correlated with each other; (2) The regression analysis indicated that parental favoritism index could significantly predict children's aggressive behavior; (3) The single mediating analysis showed that parental emotional warmth and sibling conflict had single complete mediating effect between parental favoritism index and aggressive behavior. (4) The chain mediating analysis showed that parental emotional warmth and sibling conflict had chain mediating effect between parental favoritism index and aggressive behavior. Besides that, parental emotional warmth and sibling conflict also had chain mediating effect between single demention of parental differ-ential treatment (DPA and DPC) and aggressive behavior. These findings demonstrated that parental favoritism index could predict children's aggressive behavior. The lower the parental favoritism index, the less perceived parental favoritism, and the more aggressive behaviors may occur to children. Perception of parental differential treatment and parental favoritism index can effect on children's aggressive behavior through parental emotional warmth and sibling conflict.
修改评论