The Relationship between Parenting Style and Social Behavior: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis

¹ Education and Administration Center for International Students, School of Foreign Languages, Chongqing University of Technology, Chongqing 400054, China,

² Faculty of Education, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, China,

ssr 2025 , 7(1), 259–276; https://doi.org/10.26689/ssr.v7i1.9435

© 2025 by the Authors. Licensee Whioce Publishing, Singapore. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ )

Abstract

Given that evidence for meta-analysis on the association between parenting style and social behavior has been relatively sparse, this research will provide useful information for the field. This article presents a meta-analysis of the association between parenting style and social behavior in Chinese children. A total of 47 eligible studies with 98 independent effect sizes (54,448 participants) were included in this meta-analysis. First, the study conducted a random-effects meta-analysis to assess the association between parenting style (positive vs. negative) and social behavior (prosocial vs. aggressive). Next, the study performed moderation analyses based on the meta-regression analyses for the continuous variable (sex ratio) and the Q statistics for categorical variables of the publication period (i.e., development period, COVID-19 period). Results were that positive parenting style was positively correlated with prosocial behavior (r = 0.24, 95%CI[0.17,0.31], P < 0.001), whilst negative parenting style was negatively correlated with prosocial behavior (r = -0.10, 95%CI[-0.13,-0.06], P < 0.001). Positive parenting style was negatively correlated with aggressive behavior (r = -0.17, 95%CI[-0.21,0.-12], P < 0.001), whilst negative parenting style was positively correlated with aggressive behavior (r = 0.23, 95%CI[0.15,0.30], P < 0.001). These findings suggest that a positive parenting style should be applied as much as possible to shape children’s prosocial behavior, whilst a negative parenting style should not be applied to avoid aggressive behavior.

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