Parenting Behavior in Relation to Children's Socio-Emotional Skills: A Latent Profile Analysis

Parenting is closely linked to children’s social-emotional development, including externalizing behavior, peer relationships, and emotion regulation. However, most existing research has examined these associations using single parenting behaviors or predefined parenting styles, thereby neglecting the complex co-occurrence of different parenting practices. To address this limitation, the present study applied a person-centered approach using Latent Profile Analysis (LPA) to identify distinct parenting profiles and explore their associations with child socioemotional skills. Based on reports of parenting behavior from parents of N = 254 kindergarten children (51.2% female, M = 6.0 years, SD = 0.62), three parenting profiles emerged: supportive (66%), engaged-disciplinary (22%), and harsh (12%). Associations with teacher-rated outcomes showed that children exposed to engaged-disciplinary parenting displayed more peer problems. In comparison, children assigned to the harsh parenting group showed more behavioral problems and, unexpectedly, stronger emotion regulation skills. The findings underscore the need to tailor support to specific subgroups of parents with distinct parenting behaviors, to strengthen positive parenting behaviors, and, in turn, promote the development of children.