Asian American and European American Emerging Adults' Perceived Parenting Styles and Self-Regulation Ability

Self-regulation refers to one's ability to manage one's emotions and behaviors in response to situational demands and is an important ability during emerging adulthood. Parenting styles play a significant role in children's self-regulation development. Differences in the levels of parenting styles (authoritative and authoritarian styles) and self-regulation abilities between Asian Americans (AAs) and European Americans (EAs) have been found. However, few studies have explored the associations between parenting styles and self-regulation among emerging adults across these two cultural groups. The present study compared 377 emerging adults (146 AAs and 231 EAs, 71% female, M-age = 20.19, SDage = 1.67) on the following: a) their perceptions of their parents' parenting styles, (b) their self-regulation ability, and (c) the associations between perceived parenting styles and self-regulation skills. Our moderated mediation analysis indicated that parenting styles explained the ethnic differences in emerging adults' self-regulation, but ethnicity did not moderate the effects of parenting styles on self-regulation. Specifically, compared with their EA counterparts, AA emerging adults perceived receiving lower levels of authoritative parenting and higher levels of authoritarian parenting, which in turn predicted lower self-regulation abilities in AA versus EA emerging adults. However, for both AA and EA emerging adults, authoritative parenting was positively associated with self-regulation and authoritarian parenting was negatively associated with self-regulation.