Family parenting styles and their associations with student academic performance and social adaptability: a cross-sectional study

Family parenting style has a profound impact on students’ growth. Existing research focuses on the direct impact of parenting style on students’ growth, and lacks attention to the mediation and regulation mechanism between psychological variables and environmental variables between parenting style and individual growth. Taking into account the representativeness of the sample and its relationship with student development, this paper focuses on the path mechanism of authoritative, despotic, and neglectful family education styles on academic self-efficacy and individual growth and development. Based on social cognitive theory (SCT), ecological system theory (EST), and socioeconomic status (SES) model, a structural equation model (SEM) is constructed and combined with mediation effect and moderation effect analysis. The influence mechanism of the three family education styles on academic achievement and social adaptability is systematically explored, and family SES is included as a potential moderator variable, aiming to deepen the understanding of the impact on student growth. The results show that authoritative parenting style can significantly improve students’ self-efficacy, thereby promoting academic achievement ( \({{PAQ}}_{{auth}}→ {SE}→ A\) estimate is 0.154, p < 0.001, and confidence interval 95% CI is [0.109, 0.203]). Authoritarian and neglectful parenting styles negatively affect self-efficacy ( \({{PAQ}}_{{authcratic}}→ {SE}→ A\) and \({{PAQ}}_{{neglectful}}→ {SE}→ A\) estimates are −0.152 and −0.137, respectively, p < 0.001). Self-efficacy has a significant positive predictive effect on social adaptability ( \({θ }₁=0.452\) , p < 0.001). Social adaptability includes three dimensions: interpersonal adaptability, emotional regulation ability and environmental adaptability. And family SES has a significant moderating effect ( p < 0.001). Based on this, this study suggests advocating authoritative parenting, providing support for families with low SES, and improving the quality of family communication to enhance students’ self-efficacy, thereby promoting their comprehensive personal development and healthy growth.