Journal of Family Psychology 2000, Vol. 14, No. 3, 401-419 Copyright 2000 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. O893-32OO/00/$5.OO DOI: 10.1037//0893-3200.14.3.401 Parental Warmth, Control, and Indulgence and Their Relations to Adjustment in Chinese Children: A Longitudinal Study Xinyin Chen and Mowei Liu University of Western Ontario Dan Li Shanghai Teachers' University A sample of children, initially 12 years old, in the People's Republic of China participated in this 2-year longitudinal study. Data on parental warmth, control, and indulgence were collected from children's self-reports. Information concerning social, academic, and psychological adjustment was obtained from multiple sources. The results indicated that parenting styles might be a function of child gender and change with age. Regression analyses revealed that parenting styles of fathers and mothers predicted different outcomes. Whereas maternal warmth had significant contributions to the prediction of emotional adjustment, paternal warmth significantly predicted Later social and school achievement It was also found that paternal, but not maternal, indulgence significantly predicted children's adjustment difficulties. The contributions of the parenting variables might be moderated by the child's initial conditions. The role of parenting in children's socio- emotional and cognitive development has been one of the central issues in developmen- tal research. It has been found that, in most cultures, parental attitudes and behaviors to- ward the child may have a long-term impact on parent-child relationships and the child's adaptive and maladaptive functioning (Le- Vine, Miller, & West, 1988; Whiting & Ed- wards, 1988). Among various aspects of par- Xinyin Chen and Mowei Liu, Department of Psy- chology, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada; Dan Li, Department of Psychology, Shanghai Teachers* University, Shanghai, People's Republic of China. The research described herein was supported by grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Re- search Council of Canada and by a Faculty Award from the William T. Grant Foundation. We are grate- ful to the children for their participation and to the following individuals who aided in the collection and coding of data: Bo-shu Li, Guozhen Cen, Zhen-yun Li, Xiang-ping Gao, and Hai-geng Gu at Shanghai Teachers' University. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Xinyin Chen, Department of Psychol- ogy, University of Western Ontario, London, On- tario, Canada N6A 5C2. enting, parental warmth has received the most attention from theorists and researchers (e.g., Baumrind, 1967, 1971; MacDonald, 1992). Parental warmth and affection may constitute a social and emotional resource that allows children to explore their environments and thus may be related to the development of feelings of security, confidence, trust, and positive orientation towards others (Bowlby, 1969). Parental sensitive or hostile behaviors may also serve as a model for children (Ban- dura, 1977). Consistent with these arguments, it has been found that warm and responsive par- enting styles predict cooperative and affiliative behavior and social competence in children (e.g., Booth, Rose-Krasnor, McKinnon, & Ru- bin, 1994; Hart, DeWolf, Wozniak, & Burts, 1992). In contrast, parental hostility and neglect have been found to be associated with incom- petent and deviant behavior such as aggression and other adjustment problems (Dishion, 1990; Hart et al., 1992; A. Russell & Russell, 1996). It is believed that parental warmth may have cross-culturally universal significance for child development (Rohner, 1986). In addition to the dimension of warmth, pa- rental control or supervision has been empha- sized in the literature (Baumrind, 1971; Mac- coby & Martin, 1983). Compared with warmth, 401 This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.