Indirect Effects of Parenting Style on the Relationship between Maternal Personality and Children’s Creativity

Abstract

Mothers are important persons in the development of creativity in young children. The aim of this study was to examine whether and how mothers influence the creativity of their children. We investigated maternal personality and parenting style through parents’ reports, while children’s creativity of 88 Chinese kindergarten children (age M = 5.50, SD = 0.567) was rated by Torrance TCAM. There was an indirect effect of authoritarian parenting in the relation between maternal neuroticism and children’s creativity in terms of originality. Neurotic mothers may tend to be more authoritarian and in turn, reduce their children’s creativity. Further, parenting style related to not setting any guidelines at all (or NGA) may have indirect effects on the relation between maternal conscientiousness and openness toward children’s creativity. The opposite direction between Chinese parents’ preferential parenting and creativity encouragement parenting was found.