When Negative Parenting Becomes More or Less Stressful: The Moderating Roles of Parental Empathy in Vietnamese Adolescents

Abstract

Negative parenting is associated with adolescent maladjustment but less is known about its relation to stress symptoms specifically and the parental processes that may alter this association. This study examined whether negative parenting was associated with adolescent stress symptoms and whether parental cognitive empathy and affective dissonance moderated this association in Vietnam. Participants were 457 parent-adolescent dyads. Adolescents (Mage = 13.20 years, SD = 0.82; 53.8% girls) reported stress symptoms, whereas parents (Mage = 42.60 years, SD = 4.06; 86.7% mothers) reported negative parenting and empathy-related characteristics. Across models, negative parenting was positively associated with adolescent stress. Cognitive empathy attenuated this association, whereas affective dissonance strengthened it. These findings suggest that the association between negative parenting and adolescent stress depends partly on parents’ emotional orientation toward the child and highlight parental empathy-related processes as relevant to adolescent stress in Vietnam.