Relationship between Authoritative Parenting Style and Preschool Children's Emotion Regulation: A Moderated Mediation Model

An authoritative parenting style has been shown to promote children's emotion regulation in European-American family studies. However, little is known about how sleep problems and the child's sibling status in Chinese families affect this relationship. Based on family system theory, this study attempts to better understand the relationship between authoritative parenting style and emotion regulation. Mothers of preschool children in Chinese kindergartens completed questionnaires about their children's sleep habits, their authoritative parenting styles, and children's emotion regulation. A total of 531 children participated in this study. Results showed that authoritative parenting was positively associated with emotional regulation. Sleep problems mediated the effects of authoritative parenting style on emotion regulation. The child's sibling status moderated the mediating effects of sleep problems in authoritative parenting and emotion regulation relationships. Specifically, the relationship between the authoritative parenting style and sleep problems was significant for only children, while birth order had no significant influence on the authoritative parenting style and sleep problems in two-child families. These findings suggest that a lowauthoritative parenting style predicts low emotion regulation through sleep problems, and this depends on the child's sibling status, indicating that children without siblings may impair emotion regulation due to increased sleep problems.