Abstract
OBJECTIVES: Against the backdrop of intensifying educational competition in contemporary society, parents increasingly prioritize their children's development. Parental educational anxiety has become a key factor affecting adolescents' psychological well-being. However, the pathways through which parental educational anxiety influences adolescents' depressive symptoms, particularly the role of adolescents' internal psychological processes, and the moderating function of family supportive factors remain unclear. Situated in the Chinese cultural context, this study aims to construct a moderated mediation model to examine the mediating role of perceived stress in the association between parental educational anxiety and depression among junior middle school students and whether parental educational time investment buffers this pathway. METHODS: A cross-sectional survey was conducted, with data collected over one month in June 2023. Using convenience sampling, questionnaires were administered to 736 junior middle school students and their parents from Changsha, Xiangtan, and Shaoyang. Measures included the Chinese Stress Perception Scale (CPSS), the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9), Parental Educational Anxiety Scale, and the Parental Educational Time Investment Questionnaire. A moderated mediation analysis was performed with the PROCESS macro in SPSS, and network structure estimation was conducted using R software. RESULTS: Correlation analyses showed that parental educational anxiety was significantly positively associated with junior middle school students' perceived stress and depression (r=0.178 and r=0.155, respectively; both P<0.01). Adolescents' perceived stress was significantly positively correlated with depression (r=0.570, P<0.01) and significantly negatively correlated with parental educational time investment (r=-0.102, P<0.01). Mediation analysis indicated that perceived stress fully mediated the relationship between parental educational anxiety and adolescent depression, with an indirect effect of 0.840, accounting for 64.1% of the total effect. Gender differences were observed: the indirect effect was 1.101 among boys (79.6% of the total effect) and 0.624 among girls (48.6% of the total effect). Moderation analysis further revealed that the interaction between the perceived stress and parental educational time investment significantly and negatively predicted adolescent depression [β=-0.039, t=-2.106, 95% confidence interval (CI) -0.075 to -0.003, P<0.05]. Network analysis showed that among the 4 dimensions of parental educational anxiety, "future development anxiety" had the highest node strength and was the most central and influential node in the network. CONCLUSIONS: Within the Chinese cultural context, parental educational anxiety heightens junior middle school students' perceived stress, which in turn exacerbates their depressive symptoms, highlighting the mediating role of adolescents' cognitive appraisal. Parental educational time investment effectively buffers the negative impact of stress on depression, suggesting its protective significance within the "family stress-individual cognition-emotional health" pathway. Anxiety regarding children's "future development" constitutes the central component of the parental educational anxiety network.