关键词: 父子关系, 母子关系, 学业自我效能感, 生涯决策自我效能感, 生涯适应力

Abstract: Secondary education is an important component of China’s education system. With the upgrading of industrial structure and the advancement of a new round of vocational education reform, it is crucial to understand how to enhance the adaptability of secondary vocational students in achieving career transitions. Previous research has revealed the significant influences of family environment on adolescents' career development. However, compared to regular high school students whose main career development goal is academic achievement, secondary vocational students tend to be more employment-oriented. Considering that secondary vocational students are still in the stage of adolescence where their physical and mental development is not yet mature, they face challenges in career transitions that are difficult to handle independently. Therefore, they need more trust and guidance from their parents in this process. Particularly, in the Chinese cultural context, where there is a long-standing tradition of high parent-child dependency, one of the important motivations for children's career development is to bring honor to their families. Moreover, fathers and mothers also play different roles in the process of their children's career development. Therefore, it has positive theoretical and practical significance to thoroughly explore the longitudinal predictive role of parent-child relationship quality on the career adaptability of secondary vocational students in China and its underlying mechanisms within the Chinese cultural background.
According to the career construction theory, self-efficacy serves as a core mechanism mediating the development of career adaptability in response to situational factors. Given that academic achievement and career decision-making are the most prominent career development tasks for vocational students, this study examined the longitudinal predictive role of father-child and mother-child relationships on the career adaptability of secondary vocational students in the Chinese cultural background, as well as the mediating roles of academic self-efficacy and career decision self-efficacy in this relationship. The study employed a cluster sampling method and collaborated with a secondary vocational college in an eastern province of China to conduct an online questionnaire survey of 1214 participants in their first year of high school. The study conducted three waves of follow-up surveys. Participants completed the questionnaires on father-son/mother-son relationships, academic self-efficacy, career decision-making self-efficacy, and career adaptability at Time 1. Additionally, participants responded to questions regarding gender, age, subjective family socioeconomic status, and academic performance. After a six-month interval (Time 2), they completed the questionnaires on academic self-efficacy and career decision-making self-efficacy again. Following another six-month interval (Time 3), they completed the career adaptability scale.
Controlling for gender, grade, socioeconomic status, and Time 1 career adaptability, the results from the study sample revealed that: (1) Father-child relationships can positively predict the career adaptability of secondary vocational students, while the direct predictive effect of mother-son relationships is not significant. (2) Mother-child relationships can promote the development of career adaptability in secondary vocational students through academic self-efficacy and career decision-making self-efficacy, whereas the quality of father-child relationships longitudinally predicts career adaptability in secondary vocational students only through career decision-making self-efficacy.
Our study has theoretical and practical implications. First, by adopting a relational perspective and considering both parent-child relationships and mother-child relationships, we explore the longitudinal associations between parent-child relationships and the career adaptability of secondary vocational school students, as well as the mediating roles of academic self-efficacy and career decision self-efficacy. This contributes to establishing a more comprehensive “Family Relationships - Campus Learning - Career Development” model and further deepens the theoretical and localized research findings on parent-child relationships and career adaptability development. Additionally, the results of this study indicate that a good parent-child relationship can enhance the self-efficacy of secondary vocational students in both academic and career decision-making aspects, thereby promoting the development of their career adaptability. Furthermore, the influence of father-child relationships on the career adaptability of secondary vocational students in China may be more prominent in terms of vocational attributes, and it is necessary to pay sufficient attention to the role of fathers in guiding their children's career development in the future.

Key words: father-child relationship, mother-child relationship, academic self-efficacy, career decision self-efficacy, career adaptability