Fig. 2

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