Nurturing creativity in Chinese families: The family creative climate as a mediator and mother-child closeness/conflict as moderators in the link between maternal creative self-efficacy and children's creative potential traits

Abstract

This study investigates the complex interplay between maternal creative self-efficacy, family creative climate, and mother-child relationships in fostering children's creative potential traits among 1,359 mother-child Chinese dyads. Using questionnaires and employing multiple parallel mediation and moderated mediation analyses, our findings reveal that the family creative climate, specifically encouragement of novelty, support of perseverance, and encouragement to fantasize, significantly mediates the relationship between mothers' creative self-efficacy and children's creative potential traits (risk-taking, curiosity, imagination, and complexity preference). Notably, mother-child closeness emerged as a crucial moderator, enhancing the positive impact of maternal creative self-efficacy on support of creative perseverance, and strengthening the relationship between encouragement to fantasize and children's curiosity. However, encouragement of nonconformism did not show significant mediation effects, and mother-child conflict did not moderate the mediation model. These results highlight culturally specific pathways of creativity development in China, emphasizing the importance of harmonious family relationships in fostering creativity. This study contributes to a non-Western understanding of creativity development and underscores the need for culturally sensitive approaches in creativity research, theory, and intervention practices.