Intergenerational Educational Expectation Discrepancies and Adolescent Mental Health: Evidence from China

In the context of increasingly fierce educational competition and the growing concern over adolescent mental health, discrepancies in educational expectations between parents and children have become a crucial factor in understanding adolescent psychological development. Although previous studies have confirmed the significant influence of parental educational expectations on adolescent academic and psychological outcomes, few have systematically examined intergenerational discrepancies in educational expectations and their potential nonlinear effects. Using samples from the China Education Panel Survey (CEPS), this study constructs an indicator of educational expectation discrepancy and empirically investigates its impact mechanism on adolescent mental health. The results reveal a significant inverted U-shaped relationship between intergenerational educational expectation discrepancies and adolescent mental health: adolescent psychological well-being is optimal when parental and self-expectations are consistent or similar, whereas excessive discrepancies—whether parents' expectations exceed or fall below their child—significantly increase psychological distress. Further analysis indicates that family conflict, family interaction, and parental educational confidence play key mediating roles, while parental control amplifies the adverse effects of expectation misalignment. This study deepens the understanding of the dynamic role of educational expectations within family systems and provides new empirical evidence and interdisciplinary insights for educational sociology and developmental psychology.