Tracing the Impact of Parenting and Filial Piety Beliefs on Chinese Parent-Child Closeness and Conflict.

This study investigated longitudinal dyadic pathways from parents' and adult children's perceived parenting styles to relationship closeness and conflict, with dual filial piety beliefs as potential mediators. A total of 153 parent-child dyads from China participated in a two-wave survey conducted over a one-year interval. At Wave 1, participants reported on perceived parenting styles (authoritative and authoritarian), dual filial piety beliefs (reciprocal and authoritarian), and relationship closeness and conflict. At Wave 2, both parents and children reassessed their perceptions of relationship closeness and conflict. Actor-Partner Interdependence Model revealed parent-child discrepancies: Parents' authoritarian parenting predicted greater closeness and less conflict for themselves, whereas children's perceptions of authoritarian parenting predicted higher conflict. Structural equation modeling showed that reciprocal filial piety mediated the positive association between parents' authoritative parenting and both parents' and children's closeness, and the negative association with both parents' and children's conflict. In contrast, authoritarian filial piety did not mediate any associations. These findings suggest that interventions promoting autonomy-supportive parenting and reciprocal filial values may strengthen parent-child relationships in contemporary Chinese families.