Parental Psychological Control and Children's Learning Engagement and Life Satisfaction: The Moderating Role of Perceived Social Mobility

Exploring the child factors that alleviate the negative effects of parental psychological control has important practical value. This study aimed to uncover whether perceived social mobility moderates the relationships between parental psychological control and children's learning engagement and life satisfaction. A total of 1725 Chinese children participated in this study (M age = 10.77 years; 53.20% boys). The results showed that perceived social mobility moderated the correlation between parental psychological control and learning engagement. For children with lower perceived social mobility, parental psychological control was negatively related to learning engagement; for children with higher perceived social mobility, parental psychological control was not correlated with learning engagement. Moreover, perceived social mobility did not moderate the negative relationship between parental psychological control and life satisfaction. These findings suggested that perceived social mobility is a child resilience factor that protects children's learning engagement from the adverse effects of parental psychological control.