Received 19 June 2015; accepted 13 September 2015; published 17 September 2015

ABSTRACT

This paper examines how and to what extent parental rearing patterns influence the type of teenage teasing and its impact by making use of a Chinese version Egna Minnen Barndoms Uppfostran (EMBU). The participants include 582 adolescents in 7th-, 8th-, 9th-, 10th-, 11th- and 12th- grades from 2 schools in 2 cities in Sichuan province, China. The results show that teasing of physical appearance and social behavior occurs often, and that the impact of social behavior and performance is the greatest. The study finds that teenage teasing varies significantly depending on the subject’s gender, whether it occurs in urban or rural settings, whether the teenagers are left- behind or non-left-behind, as well as the level of paternal educational. Positive parental rearing practices (that involve emotional warmth) are also found to be negatively correlated with teenage teasing and its influence (except academics); while negative parental rearing patterns (rejection, punishment, control and favoring subject) are positively correlated with teenage teasing and its influence, among which paternal rejection and parental control have the greatest influence on teenagers teasing and its influence.

Keywords:

Teenagers, Parental Rearing Patterns, Teasing, Cross-Sectional Study

1. Introduction

Teasing, a detrimental form of human interaction, is a common and complex phenomenon. The study history of teasing in psychology is not long, and researchers have defined teasing from different research angles ( Lightner, Bollmer, Harris, Milieh, & Scambler, 2000 ). Shapiro thinks that teasing is rude or hurting other people’s information, and comprises three elements of infringement, humor and lack of clarity ( Shapior & Jeremy, 1991 ). Warm defines teasing as an intentional act perpetrated by a teaser that makes the victim feel anxious ,depressed , angry, embarrassed ,self-abased, strained, and so on ( Warm, 1997 ). The former definition emphasizes the elements of the act of teasing, while the latter emphasizes its intention and consequences. Strawser et al. (2005) consider teasing as a special form of companion oral bullying; Garrity & Baris (1996) emphasize that damaging teasing is a slight or moderate form of bullying that may cause serious physical and mental damage of the victims. Roth et al. (2002) , whose approach focuses on the content of teasing, describes teasing as the verbal abuse and ridicule one experiences based on one’s appearance, personality or behavior. The content of teasing involves personal and social factors, including appearance, behavior, academic performance, family background, social behavior, and so on. Conclusively above, the article holds that teasing is the verbal abuse of a subject based on the subject’s personal appearance, behavior, ability, personality, or family background, and that teasing causes negative experience with mild or moderate damage.

Teasing affects the subjects of teasing both positively and negatively ( Ao, 2009 ). On the one hand, teasing helps promote cognitive development in children and functions as a means for them to acquire, regulate and undertake social identity, establish and consolidate interpersonal relationships, and solve interpersonal conflict though indirect emotion transfer ( Douglas, Scambler, & Monica, 1998 ). On the other hand, some researchers believe that teasing might lead those on the receiving end of it to depression, eating disorders, and other adverse consequences ( Cash, 1995 ; Furman, Thompson, 2002 ).There are close relationships between the extent of teasing and individual receives and his or her physical health, mental health, and social well-adjustedness. Because adolescence is a critical period of physical and mental development, research on teasing and its causes is of great significance to their mental and physical health.

Intuitively, since the family can be likened to the first “class” in children’s growth, with parents functioning as the child’s first teachers, parental rearing patterns would have a great effect on their children’s mental development and their way to adapt to the enviroment. Researchers have divided parenting educational styles into four types: authoritarian, authoritative, indulgent, and indifferent. The existing research ( Dong & Zhang, 2005 ) suggests that there is a relatively stable relationship between victims and the parenting style of their parents, such as too close relationship in the boys’ family, mother excessively spoiling and protecting her son. The mother seems to stifle their son’s capacities for independence and forming healthy peer relations by being overly involved in her son’s life. Female victims of bullying tend to come from family backgrounds of emotional abuse and other unhealthy characteristics. Previous studies on teasing also support the relationship between children and their parents. Freeman and Luo (2005) believe that family environment is one of the primary factors driving victimhood in teasing, and that improper parental behavior (such as spoiling the child) is an important factor of the family environment. If parents can empathize with their children’s feelings of hurt, express understanding and care, and constructively discuss solutions to teasing when their child being laughed at, parents might be better poised to understand the teasing situation and children might be in a better position to deal with the teasing. Conversely, children may feel more hurt and belittled if the parents laugh at teasing off and put forward immature suggestions or even improperly excessive behaviors. However, there have been few research studies done on parental rearing patterns and adolescent teasing, as well as comparisons of influence of teasing in China vs. world. This study explores the present situation of adolescent teasing and its influence, and explores the relationship between parental educating and teasing through survey methods.

2. Methods

2.1. Participants

The participants were randomly selected from the juniors to the seniors of the middle schools from the cities of Neijiang and Ziyang in Sichuan province, China. The participants are aged between 12 and 19 (M = 15.07). The number of students on different demographic variables shows in Table 1.

2.2. Instrument

2.2.1. Parental Rearing Patterns Questionnaire

We used the Chinese-version Egna Minnen Barndoms Uppfostran (EMBU) revised by Yue ( Wang, Wang, & Ma, 1999 )

to collect information concerning parental rearing patterns. This scale records paternal and maternal rearing patterns, and is comprised of 66 items to be answered on a 4-point Likert scale (1 = No, never; 2 = Yes, but seldom; 3 = Yes, often; 4 = Yes, most of the time). The six factors used to describe paternal rearing patterns are: emotional warmth, punishment, control, rejection, favoring subject and overprotection; the five factors used to depict maternal rearing patterns are emotional warmth, punishment, rejection, favoring subject and control and overprotection. In the present study, the split-half reliability of the scale is 0.843 and Cronbach’s α coefficient is 0.838, while the split-half reliability of sub-scales lies between 0.64 and 0.89. The data is thus satisfactory, reliable and valid.

2.2.2. Teasing Questionnaire

Teasing questionnaire: The study adopts 29-item Teasing Questionnaire of Strawser et al. ( Strawser, Storch, & Robert, 2005 ), which is revised by Zhou ( Zhou, 2009 ) and answered on a 5-point Likert scale (1 = never, 2 = little, 3 = sometimes, 4 = often, 5 = always). The higher the score is, the more serious the teasing and its influence are. The scales of teasing and its influence both contain five dimensionalities, performance, academics, social behavior, family background and appearance. In the present study, the split-half reliability of teasing is 0.801 and Cronbach’s α coefficient is 0.872; the split-half reliability of teasing influence scale is 0.889 and Cronbach’s α coefficient is 0.920. This scale too is satisfactory reliable and valid.

2.2.3. Demographic Information

The study also collect the demographic information about gender, grade, region (urban and rural), whether the stay-at-home child, the education level of parents (junior high school and the following, senior high school and university), and the occupation of parents (worker, farmer, and intellectual).

2.3. Procedure and Date Analyses

All the data were collected by survey, and all the investigators are trained teachers. The questionnaires are recovered after the students finish them. The statistical analyses include descriptive statistics, analysis of variance, correlation analysis, and stepwise regression analysis, which were performed by the SPSS statistical package version 12.0.

3. Results

3.1. The General Characteristics of Teenagers Teasing

The total mean of teasing is 1.511. By comparing the means, it is found that appearance teasing was the most common (M = 1.550), followed by teasing of social behavior (M = 1.548), family background (1.537), performance (M = 1.519) and teasing of academics (M = 1.457), which shows that adolescents’ physical appearance is more vulnerable to be laughed at, and academics is the least. To the teasing influences, the total mean score is 1.235; the influence on social behavior is the highest (M = 1.624), and the rest in turn is the influence of performance (M = 1.564), family background (M = 1.516), physical appearance (M = 1.516), and academics (M = 1.431), which shows that social behavior is the most easy to be laughed at.

3.2. Differences in Teenagers Teasing Based on Demographic Variables

The result shows that teasing of teenagers family background is significantly different on paternal educational degree (F = 3.595^*), and that is higher in father with educational degree of junior middle school or below than in father with educational degree of high middle school (P < 0.05) and university (P < 0.05). Teenage teasing of academic success (T = 2.264^*) and performance (T = −2.162^*) are significantly different depending on gender. Academic teasing of boys is higher than that of girls’ (P < 0.05), while performance teasing of boys registered lower than that of girls’ (P < 0.05). There are significant differences in the teasing of academics (T = −3.124^**), social behavior (T = −3.165^**), family background (T = −3.126^**), physical appearance (T = −2.044^*) and total teasing mean (T = −2.926^**) between urban and rural areas; with urban scores lower than rural scores. Stay-at- home children received a higher score than those who do not in terms of teasing of academics (T = 2.767^**), social behavior (T = 2.142^*) and in aggregate (T = 1.975^*). Teenager teasing is no significant differences on grades, teenage academic performance, maternal educational degree, parents’ occupation, and family income.

The effect of teasing on boy’s social behavior (T = 2.087^*) and performance (T = 3.115^**) is lower than on girl’s. Urban students’ influence score on academics T = 2.218^*), family background (T = 3.126^**), physical appearance (T = 2.144^*), and the total score were significantly lower than that of rural students’. Additionally, the influence of teenager teasing is no significant difference on grades, parents’ educational degree, parents’ occupations, family income and teenage academic performance.

The means of teasing and teasing influence on different demographic variables influence show in Table 1.

3.3. The Relationship of Parental Rearing Patterns and Teenagers Being Teased

Each dimension of paternal rearing patterns is closely related with teenage being teased (Table 1). Harsh paternal punishment and paternal rejections are the two most significant factors (P < 0.01), with teenage being teased, followed by paternal overprotection with total mean of being teased and its dimensions (P < 0.01), except the dimension of family background teasing. Lastly, it is paternal emotional warmth and favoring subject, that is, paternal emotional warmth is negatively correlated with teenage being teased of family background and appearance (P < 0.01). And paternal favoring subject is positively correlated with being teased of academics and performance (P < 0.05).

The relationship between maternal rearing patterns and teenage being teased differ from those of paternal rearing patterns (Table 2). The indicators that exhibit the strongest correlation with teenage being teased and all its dimensions are the following: maternal control, over-protection and favoritism, which register significantly positive results (P < 0.01). These are followed by maternal emotional warmth which is negatively correlated with total mean being teased (P < 0.05), family background being teased, and appearance being teased (P < 0.01). Additionally, maternal rejection is positively correlated with being teased of academics and performance at (P < 0.05), and punishment is significantly related with performance being teased (P < 0.05).

To further analyze the relationship between parental rearing patterns and teenage being teased, the article applies stepwise regression analysis, setting parental rearing patterns factors as independent variables and being teased total score as dependent variables. The results are shown in Table 3 that paternal rejection and parents control have great influence on teenage being teased and can predict it positively.

3.4. The Relationship between Parental Rearing Patterns and Teenagers-Teasing Influence

The dimensions of paternal rearing patterns are closely related with the influence of teenage teasing (Table 4). Paternal emotional warmth is negatively correlated with negative impact of teasing on academics (P < 0.05), performance (P < 0.05), and family background (P < 0.01); paternal control is positively correlated with teasing influence total score (P < 0.05), teenager academics influence (P < 0.05) and social behavior (P < 0.05); paternal punishment and rejection are positively correlated with teenager influence of family background (P < 0.01); and paternal favoring subject is positively correlated with teenager total score of teasing influence (P < 0.05).

The relationship between maternal rearing patterns and the impact of teenage-teasing is different from the impact of paternal rearing patterns (Table 4). The most positive correlation is between maternal punishment and teasing influence total score, performance, academics and social behavior (P < 0.01). Maternal emotional warmth and teenager academics teasing influence is significantly negative correlation (P < 0.05), and family background

Notes: ^*P < 0.05, ^**P < 0.01, ^***P < 0.001. The same for the following.

teasing influence is significantly positively correlated (P < 0.05); maternal control and favoring subject are significantly positively edge-correlated with family background teasing influence, but not correlated with others.

To further analyze the relationship between parental rearing patterns and teenagers teasing influence, the article applies stepwise regression analysis, putting parental rearing patterns factors as independent variables and teasing influence as dependent variables. The results (Table 5) show that paternal rejection and maternal punishment have great influence on teenager-teasing influence and can positively predict it.

4. Discussion

4.1. The Analysis of Teenagers Teasing and Teenager-Teasing Influence Characteristics

This study finds that teenagers are most often ridiculed for their physical appearance and social behavior, which shows that teenagers in the middle school are more likely to pay attention to appearance and social behavior. Teenagers are in puberty, pay more attention to appearance change, and more often discuss and evaluate other people’s appearance, so the frequency of teasing is relatively high. Meanwhile, it is a crucial period for middle school students to acquire social behavior, so it is vulnerably to be ridiculed when their social behavior is not in conformity with the community’s standard. There are both positive and negative effects of teasing. On the one hand, it would promote the individual to reflect on their actions and internalize social rules to their own which can help the individual socialization. On the other hand, teasing has negative effects that excessive teasing could harm individual psyche to some extent, via decreasing the teasing victim’s self-esteem and even causing depression and social anxiety. Therefore, it is conducive to decrease the harmful influence carried by teasing ,to guide teenagers to use right expressional methods to evaluate other people's behavior.

The score of teenagers appearance teasing is the highest, but among teasing influences, social behavior and performance is most likely to be affected which further illustrates that teasing has an important influence on teenagers socialization. Since, to teenagers, appearance is inherent, they are not greatly affected by teasing along those lines. However, it is worth noting that the phenomenon of many teenagers dieting due to appearance teasing are not rare. Study ( Ao, 2009 ) shows that, when teasing involves personal obesity, girls would experience more negative emotions than boys, and other studies ( Lieberman, Gauvin, Bukowski, & White, 2001 ; Zhou, 2007 ) have shown that teasing predicts eating disorder, depression, and other emotion problems.

4.2. The Differences Analysis of Teenagers Teasing on Demographic Variables

Teenager family background teasing is significant different on paternal educational degree, but not on maternal educational degree, parents occupations and family income, which can be explained by following aspects: firstly, paternal educational degree is more likely to be valued because it determines the parental rearing patterns to great extent in the traditional family and then influences students explicit behavior, academics, the level of self-esteem, and so on. Secondly, paternal educational degree affects teenager perception and teasing coping styles. Thirdly, because family income is private and parental occupation is equal, parents’ educational degree is the important index of family background. So, paternal educational degree is the most important factor to family background teasing, which is different from the result of Zhou et al. ( Zhou & Tang, 2008 ) that shows family background teasing is significantly correlated with maternal educational degree. The differences between the two research studies are perhaps due to the cultural differences of the two groups of participants; the former are Han and Tibetan adolescents from Sichuan and Qinghai provinces and the later consist of only two schools from Sichuan province. Therefore, in the future study, it is advisable to select more students from more areas and races to make the results more representative.

The gender differences of teenagers teasing are mainly concentrated on academics and performance, that is, boys’ academics teasing is higher than girls’, while performance teasing is lower than girls’. In the stage of middle school, because of boys’ lower academics attitude and academics level, they are more susceptible to be laughed at under the influence of public opinion. To the girls, because their performance is more susceptible to attention in the peer relations, the score of performance teasing is higher than boys’, which is similar as other researches ( Warm, 1997 ; Zhou & Tang, 2008 ). Girls’ social behavior and performance are more likely than boys to be ridiculed, which shows that girls pay more attention to others’ evaluation on their own external aspects. Middle school girls are in adolescence and more sensitive, and their self-confidence is generally lower than boys’, so if they are ridiculed because of social behavior and performance, their inferiority complex will be stimulated and affect them further.

The teenage teasing scores on academics, social behavior, family background, appearance and total mean are significantly different between urban and rural areas, and the former is lower than the later. The teasing influence scores of academics, family background and appearance of urban teenagers are all significantly lower than rural teenagers. Because urban teenagers are more likely to enjoy better material comforts, education resources and living environment, their teasing of academics, social behavior, and family background is lower than rural teenagers. In addition, urban teenagers pay more attention to dressing and nutrition, so appearance teasing is also lower than rural teenagers’.

Because their parents being out of home makes them unable to provide the necessary love and education to their children, left-behind teenagers are ridiculed often for their academics and social behavior. Research ( Huang, 2008 ) shows that emotion, academics, and self concept of left-behind children are all lower than non- left-behind children’s. There are two reasons. On the one hand, left-behind teenager slack parental care; on the other hand, they would think that learning is not important and they can go out to work to earn money like their parents under the influences of life stress and family values. So, their enthusiasm for learning and self-discipline is not high, which is one of the reasons why academics teasing of left-behind teenagers is higher than non- left-behind children’s.

4.3. The Relationship of Parental Rearing Patterns and Teenagers Being Teased

Paternal punishment, rejection and overprotect are significantly correlated with being teased and its dimensions, paternal rejection and control have positively predict to teenagers being teased, which shows that there is close relationship between paternal negative parental rearing patterns and teenagers being teased. Paternal is served as head of the family in general, and their parental rearing patterns have a powerful influence on mental health of their children. There is research shows that ( An, 2004 ) parents punishment, rejection, and other negative parental rearing patterns affect negatively on teenagers self-esteem level and academics. Teenagers easily spoiled under paternal overprotect and favoring subject, characterizing by laziness on academics, poorer performance, headstrong and domineering on performance and misfit which make them more likely to be laughed at.

This research shows that, maternal control and favoring subject are positively correlated with teenagers being teased dimensions and its total mean, and maternal rejection and punishment are respectively correlated with teenagers being teased of academics and performance, which support indirectly the result of Dong and Zhang ( Dong & Zhang, 2005 ). Maternal control, favoring subject, and strict educational manner are harmful to shaping good behavior and learning habits of teenagers. Firstly, it would be inhibit the development of teenagers learning autonomy and self confidence because of maternal over spoiling and protecting their children, and involving in their life. Secondly, teenagers would not get correct education and guiding on academics and daily behavior due to maternal rejection and punishment. All of these can prevent children from acquiring necessary skills and behavior for forming healthy peer relationship.

Parental emotional warmth is negatively correlated with teenagers being teased of family background and appearance, which shows that parents’ emotional warmth plays an advantageous role for establishing teenagers’ positive physical self and family security. That agrees with other research result ( An, 2003 ). Therefore, that parents adopt positive parental rearing patterns, believing children, respect their willing, equal communication with them, encouraging them self-reliance, and making them to experience more care and understanding is beneficial to form social behavior and healthy peer relationship for the teenagers. And then they would be understood and accepted by others, reducing contradiction and conflict with others and being teased

4.4. The Relationship of Parental Rearing Patterns and Influence of Teenagers Teasing

The dimensions of parental rearing patterns are also closely related with the influence of teenagers teasing, which is mainly reflected in academics, performance, social behavior and family background. Paternal protection and maternal punishment ,as the most important variables, can positively predict the influence of teenagers teasing, which agrees with Freeman’s points [12] that it would cause and aggravate the child’s psychological trauma if parents would not think themselves into their children’ places, help and support them, but even blame or ignore.

The influence of teasing is possibly both positive and negative. Teenagers would experience negative emotions because teasing might cause reduced self-esteem and other mental health issues, but that would stimulate them to determine to change. For example, teenagers who are laughed at in academics, performance and social behavior may be learn hard and change their behavior not in conformity with social evaluation standards to avoid teasing. The study result only illustrates the relationship of parental rearing patterns and the influence of teenagers teasing, but does not demonstrate the relationship of parental rearing patterns and positive and negative influences.

Existing studies ( Cheng, 2004 ; Liu & Pi, 2008 ) have shown that parental rearing patterns are closely correlated with their children’s self-efficacy, coping styles and emotion regulation strategies that can be referred that parental rearing patterns influences teenagers’ understanding and coping with teasing through cognitive style, coping styles, self-efficacy, emotion regulation strategies, and so on. In the future research, it is advisable to add some mediating or moderating variables to establish the model between parental rearing patterns and teenagers teasing to further explore the mechanism of parental rearing patterns on teenagers being teased and its influence.

5. Conclusions

Teasing is harmful behavior existing teenagers in general, and teenagers being teased of appearance and social behavior are the main aspects, followed by their being teased of family background and performance.

There are significant gender differences in teenagers being teased of academics and performance, and parental educational degree differences in family background teasing. Teenagers being teased of academics, family background, performance and social behavior are different between urban and rural teenagers, as well as left- behind and non-left-behind teenagers.

Positive parental rearing patterns are negatively correlated with teenagers being teased, but negative parental rearing patterns are positively correlated with it. In detail, paternal rejection and parents control positively predict teenagers being teased, and paternal control and maternal punishment positively predict the influence of teenagers teasing.

Cite this paper

TianmeiZhou,LiLuo, (2015) The Relationship between Parental Rearing Patterns and Teenagers Teasing. Psychology,06,1456-1468. doi: 10.4236/psych.2015.612143

References

Appendix: Questionnaires

The Teasing Questionnaire

Instructions: We’d like to know if you have ever been teased in certain aspects and the influence of these teasing to you. According to the situation described in each question below, choose the appropriate number which suits your situation and draws a “√” on the number. If you choose “Never” in the “How many times” part, the answer of “Impact on you” part is not required.

Egna Minnen av Barndoms Uppfostran―Own Memories of Parental Rearing Practices in Childhood

Before you respond to the questionnaire, please read the following instruction carefully.

There are several question groups in this questionnaire. Each question has four levels. Draw a circle on the number which is the most appropriate to your father and mother. Choose only one level for every question please. Your father and mother may have the same or different way of rearing, answer the questions honestly please.

If you were not live in a two-parent family in your childhood, you can answer the father/mother part only. If you don’t have sister (s) or brother (s), relevant questions could be skipped. This is an anonymous questionnaire, answer the questions honestly please. There are two examples of how to answer the question.

Example 1. Did your parents always beat you?

Never Occasionally Frequently Always

Father ① 2 3 4

Mother 1 ② 3 4

Example 2. Did your parents treat you warmly?

Father ① 2 3 4

Mother 1 ② 3 4

NOTES

^*Corresponding author.