The Vicious Cycle Between Parental Psychological Control and Depressive Symptoms Among Chinese Early Adolescents: Highlighting the Mediating Role of Positivity and Sex Differences.

Although the reciprocal association between psychologically controlling parenting and adolescent depressive symptoms has been well documented, less is known about the psychological mechanisms that may explain this dynamic process, particularly from a positive developmental perspective. Drawing on positive orientation theory, the present study examined whether positivity mediated the bidirectional within-person associations between parental psychological control and depressive symptoms, and whether these processes differed by sex. A sample of 4,254 Chinese early adolescents (55.5% boys; M_age = 10.93 years, SD = 0.72, range = 10-13 years) participated in a four-wave longitudinal study with six-month intervals. Random-intercept cross-lagged panel models (RI-CLPMs) revealed reciprocal within-person associations between parental psychological control and depressive symptoms in the total sample, as well as among both boys and girls. In the total sample and among girls, positivity partially mediated the bidirectional associations between parental psychological control and depressive symptoms. However, among boys, the mediating effect was not supported. These findings highlight a vicious cycle between psychologically controlling parenting and adolescent depressive symptoms and identify positivity as an important, sex-specific mechanism underlying this process. The results also suggest that interventions aimed at enhancing positivity may be particularly beneficial for disrupting maladaptive parent-adolescent dynamics and reducing depressive symptoms among Chinese early adolescents.