ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Human Developmental Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1616138
This article is part of the Research TopicSocial Influences on Ontogenetic DevelopmentView all 3 articles
Distinct Patterns of Parental Involvement in Chinese Families and Preschoolers' Social Adjustment
Provisionally accepted
- 1Shandong Normal University, Jinan, China
- 2University of Macau, Taipa, Macau Region, China
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Parental involvement during early childhood is crucial for promoting children's social development.However, few studies have explored both maternal and paternal involvement and their combined effects on children's social adjustment. To address this gap, the person-centered approach was conducted to examine the profiles of maternal and paternal involvement in a sample of 535 Chinese families with preschool children. Furthermore, the present study investigated the associations between these parental involvement profiles and preschoolers' social adjustment. Latent profile analysis identified a total of four profiles of parental involvement: Moderate maternal-low paternal involvement profile (21.9%), Both moderate involvement profile (38.1%), High maternal-moderate paternal involvement profile (28.2%), and Both high involvement profile (11.8%). Children in Both high involvement and High maternal-moderate paternal involvement profiles exhibited higher social skills compared to those in lower-involvement profiles. These findings enhance our understanding of home-based parental involvement patterns and their associations with preschoolers' social development.
Keywords: parental involvement, Maternal involvement, preschool, latent profile analysis, social development
Received: 22 Apr 2025; Accepted: 30 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Wu, Zhang, Chen and Chen. 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: Liang Chen, Shandong Normal University, Jinan, China
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