Early material parenting and adolescents’ materialism: the mediating role of overt narcissism

Although material parenting is a very common parenting style in China, it has received little attention from researchers, and thus far, only one study has demonstrated that early material parenting fosters materialism in adulthood. However, whether early material parenting promotes materialism in adolescents remains unknown. Therefore, this research aimed to examine the relationship between material parenting and materialism and the underlying mechanisms among Chinese adolescents by conducting two retrospective surveys. A pilot study was first designed to test the recall bias and parent-child rating agreement on a small sample of child-parent dyads (N = 222) using a pairing questionnaire. The results showed that there was no significant systematic error that may affect the relationship between the variables and revealed a high rating agreement between children and parents on material parenting. Then, a formal study investigated the relationship between material parenting and materialism among a larger sample of adolescents (N = 1173) and examined the mediating role of overt narcissism. We found that both conditional material rewards and unconditional material rewards positively predicted materialism, and overt narcissism played a mediating role in the relationship. Our findings indicate that early material parenting may lead to children’s overt narcissism and subsequently foster their materialistic values in adolescence.