The associations between parent-child value conflict in filial piety and adolescent depressive symptoms

doi:10.3724/SP.J.1041.2025.0058

Abstract

Abstract: As one of the core values of Chinese culture, filial piety is an important value norm for maintaining parent?child relationships and supporting family functioning, which has an important impact on the well-being of children. The value of filial piety may be conflictive between the parents and children in a family, and its psychological influences on children are unknown. Given that depression is a prominent and frequent emotional problem in adolescents and that family pressure stemming from the parent?child relationship is a major risk factor for adolescent depression, this study aimed to explore the relationship between parent?child value conflict in filial piety and adolescent depression. Given that adolescents tend to take their same-sex parents as role models, parent and child gender differences were also considered.
Longitudinal data from 3321 adolescents (1692 boys, 1629 girls; average age = 10.87 ± 0.36 years) and their fathers and mothers were collected when the adolescents were in 5th and 7th grades. In the first wave, after providing informed consent, both the adolescents and their fathers and mothers reported their concept of filial piety. In the second wave, both adolescents and their fathers and mothers reported their levels of depression. Polynomial regression and response surface analysis were used to explore the relationship between parent?child value conflict in filial piety and adolescent depression. SPSS 22.0, Mplus 7.1, and MATLAB 2022b were used to analyze the data.
The results revealed that (1) when parents' and adolescents' filial piety were not conflictive, the levels of fathers' and sons' reciprocal filial piety and authoritarian filial piety, mothers' and sons' reciprocal filial piety and authoritarian filial piety, fathers' and daughters' reciprocal filial piety and authoritarian filial piety and mothers' and daughters' reciprocal filial piety and authoritarian filial piety did not significantly predict adolescents' depression. (2) When parents' and adolescents' filial piety were conflictive, the direction of value conflict between fathers' and sons' reciprocal filial piety predicted the sons' depression. The direction of value conflict between fathers' and daughters' reciprocal filial piety, fathers' and daughters' authoritarian filial piety, mothers' and daughters' reciprocal filial piety and mothers' and daughters' authoritarian filial piety predicted the daughters' depression. Moreover, the degree of value conflict between fathers' and sons' authoritarian filial piety predicted sons' depression. The degree of value conflict between fathers' and daughters' authoritarian filial piety, mothers' and daughters' reciprocal filial piety and mothers' and daughters' authoritarian filial piety predicted the daughters' depression.
The results indicate that when parents and children reach a consensus on filial piety, the type and level of filial piety are not related to adolescents' depression, but the value conflict between fathers' and sons' filial piety and parents' and daughters' filial piety may induce adolescents' depression.

Key words: filial piety, value conflict, adolescent depression, gender difference, response surface analysis

GUO Xiaolin, ZHANG Yifan, GUAN Yuelin, LUO Liang. (2025). The associations between parent-child value conflict in filial piety and adolescent depressive symptoms. Acta Psychologica Sinica, 57(1), 58-70.

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