Objectives: This study aims to further understand the relationship between parenting styles, parent-child conflict, and social-emotional competence, which has primarily focused on emerging adults. Methods: This study recruited 275 Chinese university students. They completed questionnaires on parenting styles, parent-child conflict and social-emotional competence in a daily diary for a week. Using JASP software constructed a latent growth curve model (LGCM) and a structural equation model (SEM) to examine the hypothesis. Results: The LGCM model showed that the only fathers' over-protection significantly increased the number of baseline parent-child conflicts, but did not affect the long-term trend of conflicts. The SEM results showed that parent-child conflicts played a mediating role in the relationship between fathers' over-protection and emerging adults' social-emotional competence. Conclusion: This study found that the impact of paternal parenting styles, especially over-protective, on parent-child conflicts, affect individual's social-emotional competence.