“Beeen you and me, trust is the bridge, munication is the messenger”, Communication is the medicine for interpersonal interaction. At the family level, communication plays an important role in the emotional bonding between parents and children and in parent-child education, serving as a bridge between parents and children(Aloia, 2019; Buehler et al., 2022). Parent-child communication refers to a process of exchanging information, opinions, feelings or attitudes between parents and children for the purpose of improving emotional connection and solving problems, etc. In parent-child communication, parents and children need to consider various aspects, grasp the way of communication, pay attention to the communication skills, resolve the emotional barriers between parents and children, and negotiate together to solve problems in order to realize a good parent-child relationship such as mutual understanding, mutual support and mutual trust (Galvin et al., 1983). Good communication between parents and children is not only conducive to the development and growth of children, but also enhances the satisfaction of both spouses with their family life, which is a key factor in maintaining family happiness and stability (Stivers, 1988; Buehler et al., 2022).
However, it has been found that upon entering adolescence, children become more expansive, begin to adopt new forms of self-expression, and are more inclined to self-determination in many contexts (De Los Reyes et al., 2015), and because of this, they become dissatisfied with and antagonistic to their parents' disciplinary constraints, making the parent-child relationship increasingly strained and communication tricky as well (Collins et al., 1995). At the same time, in most Chinese families during this period, parents are in a state of "having an old man at the top and a young man at the bottom", in addition to their work, they also have to spend time and energy to take care of the old man, which reduces the opportunity to communicate with their children, and it is difficult to ensure the quality of communication. Research has shown that children in families with poor communication have a higher tendency for social rejection as well as depression (Rohner & Lansford, 2017); in a follow-up study, it was found that both father-child and mother-child communication negatively moderated the prediction of pre-tested depression on post-tested self-injury (Wang & Su, 2022); and that poor communication does not only have an effect on depression, but may also aggravate the parents' level of educational anxiety (Bronte-Tinkew et al., 2010). Therefore, good communication plays a key role in the family system as the main way to alleviate family conflicts, optimize the family atmosphere, and promote parent-child relationships.
At the same time, Styck et al., (2021) show that as children enter middle school, academic pressure gradually increases, and many students exhibit various problems (e.g., addiction to online games, lack of motivation to study, etc.). Most parents are gradually becoming overwhelmed by the complexity of their children's prosperity and learning methods, but they do not want their children to fall behind. Over time, in this state of parental education anxiety gradually became a common phenomenon(Yu et al., 2022). In short, educational anxiety refers to a variety of negative emotional experiences and physical discomfort, such as heart palpitations, insomnia, and loss of appetite, caused by excessive worry about their children's academic performance, advancement to higher education, and future employment (Chen et al., 2022). Research has found that parents with high levels of educational anxiety are more concerned about their own marital problems, creating a negative family climate (Denham, 1993; Davies & Cummings, 1998; Guajardo, Snyder, & Petersen, 2009), which in turn affects their children's physical and mental health (Scullion et al., 2011). In addition, parents at higher levels of educational anxiety are more inclined to adopt controlling, harsh, and other educational styles that are not conducive to the healthy development of their children (Guajardo et al., 2009), which in turn negatively affects the harmony of the family and the stability of the society (Fenigstein et al., 1975; Mattick & Clarke, 1988; Susan et al., 1996). It is therefore particularly important to explore the factors that influence parental anxiety and to reduce the level of parental anxiety in education.
1.1 The Mechanisms of parent-child communication quality on parental educational anxiety: based on the common fate model
According to Barnes and Olson, at the family level, communication can be categorized into positive and negative communication: in positive communication, parents and children can communicate with open hearts and minds, and they are free to share what they know and their emotional experiences, as well as to understand and trust each other (Buehler et al., 2022). Negative communication, on the other hand, refers to some of the negative outcomes that occur during parent-child communication, such as, intensified conflict, rigidity of relationship, and emotional outbursts (Yang & Zeng, 2023). In families with high-quality parent-child communication, positive communication is often used, and parents and children can have positive interactions with each other, which strengthens the emotional connection between family members, creates a favorable family atmosphere, and, in a sense, relieves parents' educational anxiety (Galvin et al., 1983; Borre & Kliewer, 2014).
However, it has been shown that communication can educate anxiety, but the mechanism of action is not clear. Therefore, in order to realize the research goal of studying parent-child communication quality and exploring its relationship with educational anxiety, this study starts from the family systems theory, a commonly used theory in family relationship research, and selects mother-child communication quality and father-child communication quality as the answer indexes of parent-child communication quality in order to demonstrate its relationship with educational anxiety more effectively.
The crossover hypothesis in family systems theory posits that every family is composed of multiple interdependent and interacting subsystems (e.g., the couple subsystem) working together (Cox & Paley, 1997). Within a particular subsystem within a family, if one party in that subsystem (e.g., the mother in a mother-child interaction) exhibits behaviors or emotions that lead to affective fluctuations, this will directly or indirectly affect the emotions or behaviors of other participants in other subsystems (e.g., the father in the marital subsystem) (White, 1999). Family members are interrelated and interact with each other to form the family system. If a problem arises in one subsystem, the other subsystems are needed to help maintain the balance and order of the family system (Combrinck-Graham, 1990). Therefore, in the face of the growing problem of educational anxiety, the assistance of other subsystems becomes particularly necessary.
Research has shown that communication is the process of transmitting and sharing information with each other, which facilitates family members to resolve family conflicts and tensions, and promotes the implementation of family members' roles and the normal functioning of the family (Koerner & Fitzpatrick, 2002), which confirming the views of the family systems theory and indicating that communication is a crucial method for the family system. For example, couple communication is very important for improving marital quality (Ledermann et al., 2010). Specifically, couple communication reduces and eliminates the root causes of conflict or tension in couples. Through communication, it is possible to explain the causes, to feel each other's feelings, and to understand each other's perceptions to correct one's own. Husband-wife communication can also seek reasonable and effective solutions to conflicts or tensions. Thus, the negative function of conflict is minimized and it helps couples to analyze the root causes of conflict calmly and rationally and negotiate solutions together. (Leuchtmann et al., 2018)
Whereas educational anxiety is mainly caused by concerns about the child's schooling and a lack of understanding of the academic problems that the child has, the intervention of the parent-child subsystem is needed in order to alleviate the tensions of parental educational anxiety and to maintain the stable functioning of the family system. As one of the most important and effective means of maintaining the parent-child parenting subsystem, high-quality parent-child communication helps to promote the improvement of problematic scenarios in the parenting subsystem and is an important means of reducing family tensions (Weber et al., 2020). Specifically, parent-child communication allows parents and children to explain to each other the causes of their own problems and helps parents and children to calmly and rationally analyze the root causes of anxiety. At the same time, parents can better understand what their children are really thinking and negotiate solutions together to achieve the effect of easing their own level of educational anxiety, so that the family system can restore balance (Friedberg et al., 2023).
Although previous research has found that good parent-child communication negatively predicts educational anxiety faced by parents (Bronte-Tinkew et al., 2010). However, after most of them have raised the issue of collaborative alleviation of educational anxiety at the family level, they have modeled the problem at the individual level of fathers and mothers respectively in terms of analyzing the problem in concrete terms, ignoring the macro-level of the family. Then this study, on the basis of summarizing the previous experience, further discusses and analyzes the relationship between the two at the family level.
This study would like to emphasize that in the family dichotomy, the thoughts, behaviors, and feelings between parents and children are connected and not completely separated. Bronfenbrenner (2005), in his ecosystem theory, states that the family ecosystem is the system that has the most direct and microscopic impact on the growth of an individual. In a family, the experiences of different members interact with each other, which in turn co-constructs the entire family climate (Pojanapotha et al., 2021; Ostovarfar et al., 2023). This interaction not only affects the family climate, but also has an impact on each member's personal development and trajectory of change (Buelga et al., 2017). Thus, the family ecosystem is a factor that must be emphasized when studying individuals. However, previous family researchers have preferred to explore issues in terms of the family, or in terms of dichotomies, while analyzing them in terms of individuals, which has some limitations in terms of statistical methods (Galovan, Holmes, & Proulx, 2017). Therefore, this paper draws on previous experience and adopts the Common Fate Model (CFM) (see Fig. 1), which has high explanatory power at the household level, to study the intrinsic interdependence among household subsystems.
The Common Fate Model is a model that describes the relationship between pairs of variables in which the underlying assumption is that one variable will have similar or different effects on two or more objects in the relationship (Ledermann & Kenny, 2012). The model focuses on exploring interactions at the group level and helps researchers to understand the mechanisms of interactions between internal objects at the macro level by modeling the way different groups act in an interdependent manner (Kenny, 1996; Ledermann & Kenny, 2012).
Previous research has found that the model can provide a more intuitive account of the effects of the macrosystem on the micro-individual (Galovan et al., 2017). Shelby and Amber's (2022) study explored the associations between frequent parent-child interactions and children's disclosure and confidentiality, as well as the moderating role played by open-ended exchanges in the Common Fate Model of Structural Equations (CFM); Pivetta et al. (2022) used CFM to analyze the relationship between parents and adolescents from a parental perspective, suggesting that mothers may have higher motivation to perceive their parenting as crucial in the context of adolescent problematic play; Jensen & Ganong (2022) used CFM to assess the effects of marital quality, marital confidence, and the quality of the stepparent-child relationship on family cohesion, expressiveness, and family harmony, providing a favorable perspective for family research.
According to Ledermann and Kenny (2012), there are two prerequisites for adopting the Common Fate Model: firstly, in the selection of variables, they should be those that have an effect on both parties; secondly, in the selection of indicators, the data used must be a reliable indicator of the variable. Based on the family system theory, parents and children are a community in a family, and both parents and children affect the quality of communication together, and the quality of parent-child communication belongs to the common fate variable. And parents' perceived educational anxiety will have an impact on each other's psychology and behavior, and educational anxiety belongs to the common fate variable. As a result, this paper explores the influence of parent-child communication quality on parents' educational anxiety from the family systems theory and proposes research hypothesis 1:
H1: Based on the Common Fate Model, parent-child communication quality negatively predicted parenting anxiety, with higher communication quality leading to lower parenting anxiety (see Fig. 2).
1.2 The Mechanisms of parent-child communication quality on parenting anxiety: the mediating role of the parent-child trust relationship
So is there an internal mechanism of influence between parent-child communication and educational anxiety? Erikson's theory of psychosocial development suggests that the establishment of a sense of trust is key to influencing a person's growth (Perry & Erikson, 1965). Parent-child trust relationship is a concrete manifestation of interpersonal trust relationship at the family level, which is a specific kind of trust that exists in a specific environment (family) and between close relationships (parent-child) (Hestenes, 1996). In everyday life, parents and children gain a basic sense of security, belonging, and dependence in their shared experiences, forming a more intimate and trusting relationship. In this process, parents and children are able to perceive each other's attitudes and behaviors and will form a stable psychological and emotional identity. Therefore, in a family, the parent-child trust relationship is an indispensable foundation for the survival of the family. As a factor closely related to family functioning, the parent-child trust relationship always influences the process of family interaction, but few studies have examined its specific mechanism of action. Therefore, based on the interaction process between parents and children, this paper converges the perspective on the role of parent-child trust relationship between parent-child communication quality and parenting anxiety.
Parent-child communication is the key to parent-child interaction, and high-quality parent-child communication plays an important role in maintaining the normal functioning of the family and promoting family harmony and stability (Yotyodying et al., 2020). Families with high-quality communication tend to have a higher degree of dependence between family members (Lee & Ng, 2023), and children's emotional and psychological qualities will be more stable (Cui, Janhonen-Abruquah, & Darling, 2022), which facilitates the cultivation of trusting relationships between parents and children and family education functions. s emotional and psychological quality will also be more stable (Cui et al., 2022), favoring the development of trusting relationships between parents and children and the educational function of the family (Efrati & Gola, 2019). So, what is the specific link between the two, parent-child communication quality and parent-child trust relationship? Considering the family level, does good quality of parent-child communication have an impact on the trust relationship between parents and children, this study will further explore the link between the two accordingly by formulating research hypothesis 2:
H2: Based on the Common Fate Model, parent-child communication quality positively predicts parent-child trust relationships, with higher communication quality leading to stronger parent-child trust relationships.
Meanwhile, Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs Theory (Maslow, 1954, 1997) suggests that individuals have a need for security as well as a need for belonging and love, where the need for security refers to protection from harm, while the need for belonging and love refers to the individual's longing for intimacy, recognition by the group, and acceptance by the group, etc., and once these needs are not fulfilled, the individual develops anxiety (Maslow et al., 1987). Research has shown that parent-child trust relationships are significantly and negatively related to parents' perceived educational anxiety, i.e., parents with higher levels of parent-child trust relationships perceive less educational anxiety and parents with lower levels of parent-child trust relationships perceive more educational anxiety (Pan et al., 2023). In other words, if parents enhance the parent-child trust relationship, so that their own needs for security, belongingness and love are satisfied, which in turn reduces anxiety due to educating their children. Accordingly, research hypothesis 3 is proposed:
H3: Parent-child trust relationship negatively predicts parents' educational anxiety, with higher levels of parent-child trust relationship being associated with lower levels of parental educational anxiety.
In summary, parents with good parent-child communication are more inclined to collaborate with each other, establish a cordial parent-child trust relationship with their children, possess a deeper understanding and a more tolerant mindset in educating their children, and are more likely to support and approve of their children in the family, avoiding excessive educational anxiety and forming a good family atmosphere. Research hypothesis 4 is proposed:
H4: Parent-child trust relationships can mediate the relationship between parent-child communication quality and parenting anxiety (see Fig. 3).
In conclusion, this study was conducted on the basis of data collected from both parents and their children, and the relationship between parent-child communication quality and parenting anxiety was first tested using the Common Fate Model. Then, based on the data, the mediating effect of parent-child trust relationship between parent-child communication quality and parental educational anxiety was explored.