The Relationship Between Parenting Styles and Needs for Parenting Guidance Moderated by Parents' and Children's Characteristics

In 2021, China released the “Double Reduction” policy and the “Promoting Home Education Law”, both emphasizing providing parenting guidance through family-school cooperation. However, parents’ needs for guidance and what factors influence their needs are unclear, posing barriers to the implementation of the national initiatives by schools and teachers. To explore parents’ needs for parenting guidance and the influencing factors on them, this study investigated 28 parents of low-grade pupils in Hailar, China, about their needs using semi-structured interviews, and surveyed 18 of them about their parenting styles and their children’s temperament using the Parenting Style Scale and the Children’s Temperament Scale. Qualitative analysis showed that parents demonstrated three needs for parenting guidance: schools and teachers optimizing feedback on tests, head teachers providing guidance while schools managing provision, and parents receiving help with improving parent-child communication skills. Quantitative analysis found associations between parents’ needs for parenting guidance and the parenting styles of rejection and overprotection. Parents’ gender, the number of their children’s siblings, and their children’s mood temperature were found to moderate the relationships between parenting styles and parents’ needs for parenting guidance. These findings provide important implications for further research in parenting guidance and family-school cooperation, as well as for practical work in schools, especially for school teachers to provide instruction for parents to educate their children according to the students’ and parents’ characteristics.