Do Controlling Parents Create Agresssive Children?

This post was conceived by and co-written with Joshua Youngwood, Rose-Hulman class of 2027. It was edited by Stephanie Youngwood.

"What Jennifer Did"

Source: Netflix / 2024

The 2024 Netflix true-crime documentary, What Jennifer Did, tells the story of then 24-year-old Jennifer Pan, who was convicted of first-degree murder for hiring hitmen to kill her parents. Jennifer’s mother, Bich, was killed, but her father, Hann, survived the attack. During the investigation, the history of the Pan family’s relationship was revealed. Bich and Hann were Vietnamese immigrants who raised Jennifer and her younger brother, Felix, in a very strict household. Her parents had high expectations and closely monitored how she spent her free time. By age four, Jennifer was already enrolled in piano lessons. Over time, she became overwhelmed by her parents’ expectations. She began lying to them about attending the University of Toronto, even forging report cards and student loan documents. When her parents discovered her lies, she and her boyfriend, Daniel Chi-Kwong Wong, hired hitmen to kill them in a staged robbery.

While the documentary highlights Daniel’s past criminal involvement as a major catalyst for the violent and tragic outcomes, it raises questions about Jennifer’s relationship with her controlling parents and the differences between Western and Asian parenting.

Controlling or disciplined?

Bich and Hann followed an approach known as “authoritarian” or “tiger" parenting, defined by high expectations and restrictions for children, with limited warmth. Interestingly, initial research comparing Asian and Caucasian children under authoritarian parenting styles found that Asian children tended to report higher achievement and less stress than Caucasian children. Psychologists then experimented with different parenting techniques to explain these findings, and three aspects were assigned to better describe Asian parenting: warmth, control, and guan. Warmth pertains to love and understanding, control is defined by high demands and a hostile or distant relationship, and guan refers to nurturing children by encouraging self-discipline and hard work.

Warmth, control, and guan: How they relate to aggression

A 2015 study by Yu Gao, Wei Zhang, and Annis Lai Chu Fung sought to further understand the relationship between parenting styles and children’s aggression types. Specifically, they wanted to examine how the three aspects correlated with two types of aggression: reactive aggression and proactive aggression. Reactive aggression refers to negative behavior in response to provocation, while proactive aggression is taking preemptive actions for personal gain. The study collected data from over 4000 Hong Kong schoolchildren from 12 primary and 11 secondary schools. The children were given a Reactive–Proactive Aggression Questionnaire (RPQ) to assess their perception of their aggression, while their parents were given a Parenting Inventory and an RPQ to assess their perception of their parenting style and their child’s aggression type.

The RPQs evaluated aggression by asking how much the children “reacted angrily when provoked by others” (reactive aggression) and “hurt others to win a game” (proactive aggression). The Parenting Inventory asked parents to rate agreement with statements like “I am restrictive/controlling of my child.”

The researchers first found that guan was negatively correlated with rated proactive aggression from both boys and girls; for boys, warmth was also negatively correlated with proactive aggression. Guan was positively correlated with reactive aggression from boys and girls. Finally, parenting styles with high control were associated with high reactive aggression in boys and girls, and controlling parents reported higher proactive aggression for boys. These findings suggest that even though guan has been associated with high achievement, it may have some costs.

Study limitations

The study had several limitations. Crucially, perceptions were not measured over time, so researchers could not draw a causal relationship between parenting style and aggression. For example, they couldn’t tell if an aggressive child resulted in a more controlling parent or the other way around. The study also relied on self-reported data, which is susceptible to biases. For example, it might be difficult for a parent to admit to employing a harsher parenting style.

Could Jennifer Pan’s controlling parents and strict upbringing have led her to wanting to kill her parents? The study by Gao et al. suggests that parenting styles are linked to aggression. But any link is surely far from direct. For starters, lots of children have controlling parents, but outcomes like Jennifer’s are exceptionally rare.