High parental self-efficacy and young adults’ reduced emotion dysregulation: A moderated mediating analysis from China

PurposeEmotion dysregulation in young adults has become an important issue in the literature. By building a moderated mediating model, this study tested the underlying mechanism of young adults' emotion dysregulation by examining the indirect effect of parental self-efficacy (PSE) on family cohesion and the moderating effect of parents' affective involvement.MethodsTwo complementary approaches were adopted to validate our hypotheses using three-stage longitudinal data from 537 Chinese families.FindingsPSE significantly affected young adults' emotion dysregulation and that family cohesion mediated the relationship between PSE and young adults' emotion dysregulation. Moreover, parents' affective involvement moderated this indirect relationship.ConclusionsParental and family factors play important roles in addressing young adults' emotion dysregulation. Our findings provide empirical evidence of the effects of family atmosphere and affective support by elucidating the mediating and moderating roles of family cohesion and affective involvement.