Fig. 1

Bidirectional associations between maternal psychological control and child self-esteem across three time points (i.e., 2 years). Note: Standardized coefficients are presented for the total sample (and for children with and without oppositional defiant problems in brackets). We conducted additional analyses to explore potential child gender differences in the associations between maternal psychological control and children’s self-esteem (see Additional file 1: S2). We found no such child gender differences