This study explores the impact of parent-child attachment mechanisms on adversarial growth among Chinese students. After Chinese college students start independent life away from their parents, they face adversity on their own. However, their original family always influences students' methods for dealing with adversity and how they grow and mature. A survey of 364 college students found that parental trust and communication have positive impacts on adversarial growth through the improvement of self-identity, while parental alienation reduces self-identity and contributes negative effects on the adversarial growth of college students. Internal control personality has a negative moderating effect between parental trust, parental communication, and adversarial growth and a positive moderating effect between parental alienation and adversarial growth. Low internal control personality therefore has a positive influence on parental trust and communication on adversarial growth and decreases the negative influence of parental alienation. A substitution effect between internal control personality and parental attachment was also found. Different child personality requires different type of parent-child attachment relationship to maximize their ability to handle future adversity.
Keywords: adversarial growth; college student; internal control personality; parent–child attachment; self-identity.