Prospective Within-person Relations among Parental Child-oriented Perfectionism, Child maladaptive Perfectionism, and Child Depressive Symptoms: A Five-wave Study.

Abstract

While existing research has well documented child perfectionism as a risk factor for depressive symptoms, relatively limited studies have delved into the specific influence of parental child-oriented perfectionism on children's depressive symptoms. This study tracked 2228 Chinese adolescents (baseline M_age = 12.95 ± 0.79 years, 46.3% girls) with five measurements over three years. Using the Random Intercept Cross-Lagged Panel Model (RI-CLPM), results indicated that maternal (not paternal) child-oriented perfectionism had bidirectional links with children's maladaptive perfectionism. Children's maladaptive perfectionism and depressive symptoms exhibited stable reciprocal prediction. SES and child sex moderate effects: three-way links were more stable in low SES families; boys showed more stable reciprocal prediction between maladaptive perfectionism and depressive symptoms; maternal child-oriented perfectionism and girls' maladaptive perfectionism exhibited some reciprocal prediction. These findings provide insights into how parental child-oriented perfectionism as well as child maladaptive perfectionism was involved in the development of child depressive symptoms, thus informing strategies to cope with child depressive symptoms.