Abstract
This study examined the links between parents' child rearing attitudes, children's social skills, and support giving and support receiving in friendships among children, with particular emphasis on the mediate effect of social skills on the relation between parents' child rearing attitudes and support giving and support receiving. The subjects were 289 sixth graders and 339 tenth graders, who completed a retrospective measure of parental care and overprotection as well as self-rating measures of help-sympathy and assertion-activeness skills and of support giving and support receiving in a friendship in the past several months. More care and less intrusive parents' child rearing attitudes were associated with higher levels of children's help-sympathy and assertion-activeness skills, which, in turn, were related to more support giving and support receiving in friendships. In addition, children's social skills mediated the relation between parents' child rearing attitudes and support giving and support receiving in friendships.
