Effects of parenting mode on student adaptability: the mediating effect of irrational beliefs

BACKGROUNDS: In the face of the new environment, different individuals have different reactions. Those who have good adaptability constantly establish individual self-efficacy through making friends and completing their studies, thus forming a good dependency with the university environment. However, individuals with poor ability to adapt to the new environment will have some bad phenomena, such as truancy, weariness and self denial. As a result, the students’ adaptations of to the growth environment where in universities are the important topics in recent years. METHODS: Present study introduces irrational beliefs to investigate the effects of parenting mode on maladaptation of university students. The questionnaires based on simplified parenting mode (Chinese), irrational belief and adaptability were administered in a survey of 510 university students in Zhanjiang on October, 2021, the list of students of Guangdong Ocean University is taken as the sampling frame and determined by random sampling. Parenting mode was used as the independent variable, while the emotionally warm, overprotective and rejecting types were used as the indices. Further, the irrational beliefs including summary comments, awful beliefs and low tolerance to setbacks as well as maladaptation were included in the mediation model for analysis. RESULTS: The results showed that the rejection parenting mode was negatively related with absolute requirements (r = − 0.143), and learning motivation (r = − 0.157), interpersonal adaptation (r = − 0.283) and physical and psychological adjustment (r = − 0.083). Overprotection was negatively correlated with absolute requirements (r = − 0.042) and interpersonal adaptation (r = − 0.042). The mediating effect of irrational beliefs (low tolerance to setbacks, awful beliefs and absolute requirements), the lower and upper limits of Bootstrap confidence interval were 0.135 and 0.461, respectively, excluding 0, which indicated that the mediating effect is true. CONCLUSION: Through the analysis of the data, this study believes that irrational beliefs such as low tolerance to setbacks, awful beliefs and absolute requirements mediate the effects on school adjustment. Negative parenting modes such as overprotection and rejection inculcate irrational beliefs, resulting in maladaptation of university students. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12888-022-04222-5.