How key family factors influence preschool children's social-emotional competence: threshold effects of parental parenting styles and parent-child interaction quality.

Introduction: Social-emotional competence is a core component of early childhood development. As the primary setting for its development, the family plays a crucial role, with parenting styles and parent-child interaction quality identified as key proximal factors. This study explores mediation and generalized summation models to examine the effects of these factors on preschool children's social-emotional competence. It identifies specific score ranges within which authoritative and permissive parenting styles, respectively, promote or hinder children's social-emotional competencies, thereby providing evidence-based reference thresholds for parental practices and offering empirical support for the development of early intervention programs tailored to the actual developmental needs of preschool children. Methods: A total of 504 preschool children aged 3-6 years and their parents in China were participated in a survey using the Social Skills Improvement System Social Emotional Learning Edition Rating Forms, the Parental Authority Questionnaire, and the Brigance Parent-Child Interactions Scale. Results: The findings revealed that: (1) Parental parenting styles and parent-child interaction quality are key familial factors influencing children's social-emotional competencies, with the former exerting a primary effect; (2) Authoritative and permissive parenting styles predict children's social-emotional competence positively and negatively, respectively. And parent-child interaction mediates the relationship between parental styles and children's social-emotional competence; (3) In the generalized additive model incorporating parent-child interaction quality, authoritative and permissive parenting styles exhibit threshold effects on children's social-emotional competence development: when authoritative parenting scores fall below 3.9, children's social-emotional competence demonstrate a significant improvement across all domains. Conversely, when permissive parenting scores range between 2.5 and 3.7, children's social-emotional competence experience a substantial decline. Discussion: This study reveals the nonlinear mechanism through which parental parenting styles and parent-child interactions jointly influence preschool children's social-emotional competencies, providing a theoretical basis for optimizing family support strategies.