Oppositional defiant problems are among the most prevalent psychological
problems among children and adolescents from China and across the world.
Still little is understood about how self-esteem, in conjunction with parenting
experiences, develops in children with oppositional defiant problems. We
addressed this gap of knowledge in a two-year longitudinal study. Specifically,
we explored how parental psychological control predicts children's self-esteem
levels over time, and in turn, how children's self-esteem levels predict parental
psychological control. We collected data in Chinese children (ages 8 to 13 at
T1) with (N = 224) and without (N = 217) oppositional defiant problems, and
tested three-wave cross-lagged panel models. Multigroup analyses showed that
the associations between parental psychological control and children's selfesteem
were the same for children with and without oppositional defiant
problems. Results for the total sample revealed bi-directional associations
between maternal psychological control and children's self-esteem. Children who perceived more psychological control from their mothers were likely to
exhibit lower self-esteem over time, and vice versa, children with lower selfesteem
were likely to perceive more maternal psychological control over time.
Conversely, a unidirectional paternal effect was observed in father-child dyads.
Our findings help understand the parent-child dynamics that shape the
psychological development of children with oppositional defiant problems.