Abstract: Objective To examine the influence of parenting style and gender disparity on adolescent problem behaviors.Methods With random cluster sampling,1387 adolescents aged 10-18 years were selected from 18 districts of Beijing municipality and a questionnaire survey was conducted among the adolescents and their parents selected from September 2007 to April 2008.Results The male adolescents had a significantly higher score for problem behaviors than the female adolescents(13.29±11.39 vs.11.86±9.91)(t=2.92,P<0.01).Compared to the male adolescents,the female adolescents had significantly higher scores for the four domains of parenting style of maternal warmth (25.12±5.91 vs.23.86±6.11),maternal monitoring (23.37±6.65 vs.22.30±6.78),fatherly warmth(25.37±4.91 vs.23.53±5.40),and fatherly monitoring(22.33±6.54 vs.20.81±6.50)(all P<0.01).Adolescents' problem behaviors were significantly correlated reveresely with the four domains of parenting style of maternal warmth(r=-0.27,P<0.01),maternal monitoring(r=-0.31,P<0.01),fatherly warmth(r=-0.28,P<0.01),and fatherly monitoring(r=-0.30,P<0.01).No moderating effect of gender disparity on the relationship between parenting style and problem behaviors was observed among the adolescents(P>0.05).Conclusion The same parental attention and concern should be paid to adolescent boys as to the girls to reduce the occurrence of problem behaviors among the boys.