Parental Alienation Behaviors and Adolescent Mental Health: A Two-Year Longitudinal Investigation of Parent-Child Attachment and Emotion Regulation

Abstract

Parental alienating behaviors represent a critical risk factor for adolescent mental health, yet their underlying mechanisms within the Chinese cultural context remain underexplored. This longitudinal study investigated the temporal dynamics through which parental alienating behaviors influence adolescent mental health outcomes via parent-child attachment and emotion regulation strategies. Utilizing three waves of data collected over two years from 837 Chinese adolescents in Yunnan Province, we administered validated measures including the Baker Strategy Questionnaire, Parent-Child Attachment Questionnaire, Emotion Regulation Strategies Scale, Satisfaction with Life Scale, and Depression-Anxiety-Loneliness Scale. Results demonstrated that parental alienating behaviors significantly predicted reduced adolescent subjective well-being and heightened adolescent depression-anxiety-loneliness. Parent-child attachment emerged as a primary mediator, while both cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression significantly mediated these relationships. Crucially, chain mediation analyses revealed sequential pathways where parental alienating behaviors first compromised parent-child attachment, subsequently impairing adolescents’ emotion regulation capacity, and ultimately exacerbating adolescent mental health risks. These findings delineate the developmental trajectory through which family dysfunction impacts adolescent adjustment, suggesting that interventions strengthening parent-child relationships and enhancing adaptive emotion regulation strategies could mitigate the psychological consequences of parental alienation. The study advances cross-cultural understanding of family dynamics in mental health development while providing empirically grounded guidance for targeted interventions.