Associations of paternal positive and harsh parenting practices with bullying involvement and self-reported academic performance among Chinese middle school students

Paternal parenting encompasses distinct forms of practices, each potentially exhibiting heterogeneous as-sociations with adolescent outcomes. Using cross-sectional survey data from 483 students from one middle school in China, this study examines how two composite indicators, capturing paternal harsh parenting and positive parenting practices, were associated with school bullying involvement and self-reported academic performance. Our empirical estimation indicate that paternal harsh parenting was associated with greater bullying perpetration and victimization, together with a weak positive association with self-reported academic performance that was significant only at the 10% level. Paternal positive parenting was associated with lower bullying involvement and, unexpectedly, with lower self-reported academic performance. These associations varied across some subgroups in exploratory moderation analyses. Exploratory analyses of potential pathways further suggest that father-child emotional closeness and adolescent rebelliousness are associated with paternal parenting practices and with bullying involvement, but not with self-reported academic performance. The findings highlight the complex role of fathers in adolescent development and indicate that any association between harsh parenting and perceived academic performance cannot offset its behavioral and relational risks.