The Relationship Between Parental Involvement and Adolescents’ Cooperative Tendencies in China: The Mediating Role of Parent-Child Trust

Does greater parental involvement lead to increased cooperation in their adolescent children? Are the effects of paternal and maternal involvement equivalent? In order to explore the above issues, this study conducted a questionnaire survey of 682 two-parent families to investigate the relationship between parental involvement and adolescents’ cooperative tendencies and the mediating role of parent–child trust. The results show that paternal involvement directly predict adolescents’ cooperative tendencies, while maternal involvement could not directly predict cooperative tendencies. In addition, parent–child trust mediates the relationship between parental involvement and adolescents’ cooperative tendencies. Compared with mother–child trust, the mediating mechanism of father–child trust is more complex. Further, the prediction of parental involvement on cooperative tendencies differs between boys and girls, and the parental prediction patterns are more diverse when the parent and child are the same gender. These findings indicate that adolescents’ cooperative tendencies are predicted by parental involvement through parent–child trust, furthermore, the specific patterns of the prediction of parental involvement on adolescents’ cooperative tendencies are need to be taken account.