The Relationship Between Career‐Specific Parental Behaviors and Career Decision‐Making Difficulties Among Chinese High School Students: The Role of Self‐Efficacy and Resilience

ABSTRACT Career decision‐making ability in adolescence plays a crucial role in future career development. We proposed a moderated mediation model to explore how parental support, interference, and lack of engagement influence career decision‐making difficulties among high school students, testing the mediating role of career decision‐making self‐efficacy and the moderating role of resilience. Data from 1592 high school students in China were collected. Results showed that parental support negatively predicted career decision‐making difficulties, whereas interference and lack of engagement positively predicted them. Career self‐efficacy partially mediates the effects of parental support on career decision‐making difficulties, but not interference and lack of engagement. The higher the level of resilience, the stronger the positive effect of parental support on students’ career self‐efficacy. However, under conditions of high resilience, lack of engagement exerts a significant negative impact on career self‐efficacy. In contrast, when resilience is low, it does not significantly affect students’ career self‐efficacy.