ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Educ.
Sec. Mental Health and Wellbeing in Education
Volume 10 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/feduc.2025.1627341
How Perceived Interparental Conflict Shapes Academic Engagement in Chinese Adolescents: A Moderated Medi ation Model*
Provisionally accepted
- Southwest University, Chongqing, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Objective :This study aimed to investigate the impact of Chinese high school students' perceived interparental conflict on their academic engagement, with a focus on the mediating roles of positive and negative academic emotions and the moderating role of emotional intelligence. Background :In China, parents often suppress interparental conflicts until after their children's college entrance exams to avoid disrupting the latter's academic performance. However, unresolved interparental conflict may impair adolescents' psychological well-being and academic engagement. Grounded in the Cognitive-Contextual Theory and the Emotional Security Theory, this research explored how perceived interparental conflict influences academic engagement through academic emotions, and how emotional intelligence buffers these adverse effects. Method:The study used data from 257 high school students in City G, Province S of China. Hierarchical regression analysis was employed to test the proposed mediating and moderating hypotheses. Results :Perceived interparental conflict had a significant negative impact on academic engagement; both positive and negative academic emotions partially mediated the relationship between perceived interparental conflict and academic engagement; emotional intelligence weakened the negative impact of perceived interparental conflict on positive academic emotions, and mitigated the positive impact of the former on negative academic emotions. Conclusion:This study confirmed the negative impact of perceived interparental conflict on high school students' academic engagement, revealed the mechanism by which interparental conflict in the family environment influences academic engagement, and proposed targeted measures and practical suggestions to prioritize students' academic emotional regulation and enhance their emotional intelligence in both school and family contexts.
Keywords: perception of interparental conflict, Academic engagement, academic emotions, Emotional Intelligence, High school students
Received: 12 May 2025; Accepted: 10 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Li and Han. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Yu Li, liyu5995@163.com
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.