Mother-adolescent monitoring dynamics and the legitimacy of parental authority

The Role of Psychological Parental Control and Internalizing Problems in the Etiology of Vigorexia and Orthorexia in Adolescence

The present study aims to explore the forms of psychological parental control that are interconnected with dysfunctional emotional states (i.e., anxiety and depression), and how these internalizing problems may manifest as distorted behaviors (i.e., vigorexic and orthorexic behaviors) during adolescence. Participants included 403 Italian adolescent athletes (231 boys and 172 girls) aged 14 to 18 years. The participants completed self-report questionnaires designed to assess psychological parental control oriented towards dependence and achievement, anxiety and depression, and vigorexia and orthorexia. The results highlight how both forms of psychological parental control predict anxiety and depression. Furthermore, anxiety was found to be linked to both vigorexic and orthorexic behaviors, while depression is connected only to vigorexia. This study delves into the intricacies of parental influence on adolescents, revealing that both dependency-oriented and success-oriented psychological parental control have notable implications for the mental well-being of adolescents. The findings underscore the interconnectedness of these factors, demonstrating that anxiety can set off a chain reaction, leading to engagement in vigorexic and orthorexic behaviors. On the other hand, depression appears to be uniquely associated with vigorexia. These insights contribute to our understanding of the complex dynamics between parental control and adolescent mental health. The implications of this research extend to both theoretical frameworks and practical interventions, emphasizing the need for a nuanced approach to supporting adolescents in navigating these challenges.

Annual Research Review: Cross-cultural similarities and differences in parenting

This article reviews contemporary research on cross-cultural similarities and differences in parenting. The article begins by providing a definition of culture and how both parenting and culture can change over historical time. The article then presents some classic theoretical frameworks for understanding culture and parenting before considering why parenting may be similar across cultures and why parenting may be different across cultures. The article next turns to a review of cross-cultural similarities and differences in several aspects of parenting, including physical caregiving, cognitive stimulation, warmth and acceptance, control and monitoring, and discipline. Cultural normativeness and beliefs on the legitimacy of parental authority are then considered as potential moderators that contribute to cross-cultural similarities and differences in relations between parenting and child outcomes. The article then considers implications for parenting interventions and laws and policies related to parenting. Finally, the article suggests directions for future research.

How Should Mothers React When They First Learn About Their Child's Involvement With Deviant Peers? The Adolescents' Perspective

Little is known regarding how parents' responses when first learning about their adolescents' deviant peer affiliation affect adolescents' further affiliation and disclosure of risk behavior to parents. Studies on the effects of parents' warnings to control adolescents' material or personal information resources are particularly scarce. To address these gaps, 237 Jewish Israeli adolescents who self-identified as interacting with deviant peers (40.50% female, mean age = 14.55 years, age range = 13-16 years) reported their mothers' actual or anticipated responses when learning for the first time about their deviant peer affiliation. The results indicated that mothers' warnings to control adolescents' material and information resources were experienced as less frustrating and more satisfying of adolescents' psychological needs than was mothers' enactment of resource control. Mothers' responses of autonomy support and warnings to use resource control were positively associated with cessation of deviant peer affiliation. Mothers' enactment of resource control was associated with adolescents' less disclosure and consultation with their mothers regarding risk behaviors, whereas the reverse was true for the general practice of autonomy support. Possible need-related mechanisms underlying the associations of warnings with the cessation of deviant peer affiliation are discussed. The results highlight the importance of parents' autonomy-supportive response to the onset of deviant peer affiliation as a specific strategy that has benefits beyond the positive effects of the general practice of autonomy support. These findings suggest that it is important to promote an autonomy-supportive response to the onset of deviant peer affiliation also among parents who are generally autonomy-supportive.

The Impact of Children's Temperament on How Parents Resolve Safety Disagreements During Preadolescence

OBJECTIVES

Parents play an important role in keeping their children safe. However, this becomes more difficult during preadolescence as children seek greater autonomy away from the direct supervision of adults. The current study focused on preadolescent youth (10-13 years) and examined parent-child disagreements about safety, with a focus on determining if child temperament attributes moderate the relation between how parents learn of these and resolve these disagreements.

METHODS

A short-term longitudinal design was used. Parents and children retrospectively recalled safety disagreements together and then independently completed questionnaires about these. Parents then tracked disagreements over 1 month.

RESULTS

The behavioral attributes of inhibitory control and risk-taking propensity both moderated the relationships between parental source of knowledge of safety disagreements and subsequent methods of resolution.

CONCLUSION

Safety-promotion messaging for parents of preadolescents may need to be tailored based on child attributes to maximize effectiveness.

Adolescent–Parent Relationships: Progress, Processes, and Prospects

The nature of adolescent–parent relationships has been a topic of enduring concern in developmental science. In this article, we review theory and current research on several central topics. First, we define adolescence as a developmental period and briefly discuss current theoretical and analytical approaches. Then, we consider adolescent–parent relationship quality, including developmental trends and individual differences in negative interactions, positive relationships, and conflict resolution, as well as research that examines relationship quality within different family subsystems. Next, we discuss effects of emotional variability and flexibility on parent–adolescent relationships and review research on adolescents’ and parents’ beliefs about parental authority legitimacy. This is followed by a discussion of current research on parenting effects on adolescent–parent relationships, including approaches that provide greater specificity in defining parental control and its links with relationship quality, as well as research on parental monitoring and adolescent information management. We conclude this article with directions for future research.

When is Parental Monitoring Effective? A Person-centered Analysis of the Role of Autonomy-supportive and Psychologically Controlling Parenting in Referred and Non-referred Adolescents

Over the last few years, the protective role of parental monitoring on adolescent adjustment (i.e., active parental efforts aimed at setting limits and tracking adolescents' activities and whereabouts) has been challenged. Recent research has shifted attention to the conditions under which monitoring may be more or less effective. Grounded in Self-Determination Theory, this study investigated the role of parents' autonomy-supportive and psychologically controlling parenting in effects of parental monitoring on adolescents' adjustment. It also considered the role of adolescents' clinical status (i.e., clinically referred vs non-referred). Adopting a person-centered approach, we aimed to identify naturally occurring profiles of monitoring, autonomy-support, and psychological control and to examine differences between these profiles in terms of life satisfaction, positive affect, and internalizing and externalizing problems. Participants included 218 referred (M_age = 14.44, 56% girls) and 218 matched adolescents from a larger sample of 1056 community (Mage = 14.83, 52.9% girls). Multigroup Latent Profile Analyses revealed five parenting profiles which were structurally equivalent in both samples: high monitoring with either high autonomy support or high psychological control, low monitoring with either high autonomy-support or high psychological control, and an average profile. Referred youth were significantly more present in the average profile and in the profiles characterized by high levels of psychological control. As hypothesized, profiles showed a differential association with adolescents' self-reported adjustment, with the high monitoring-high autonomy support profile yielding the most optimal and the low monitoring-high psychological control profile yielding the worst outcomes. Associations between profiles and outcomes were similar for referred and non-referred adolescents. These findings highlight the importance of considering the parenting climate (i.e., autonomy-supportive versus psychologically controlling) to understand effects of parental monitoring during adolescence.

Keeping secrets from parents: on galloping horses, prancing ponies and pink unicorns

We identify the need for a new wave of research on adolescent secrecy in their relationship with parents that relinquishes the focus on the nomothetic objective of finding general principles. This third wave builds on novel insights on three fallacies committed in previous waves of research: (1) between-person effects do not necessarily provide insights into within-family processes (the ecological fallacy), (2) within-family processes are not necessarily homogeneous across adolescents and families (the one size fits all fallacy), and (3) longer-term effects are not necessarily identical to short-term processes (the galloping horse fallacy). This approach promises to provide us with a more person-specific understanding of adolescent secrecy from parents, which enables more tailored insights as to when and for whom secrecy is bad versus good.

Parent-Adolescent Communication and Adolescent Delinquency: Unraveling Within-Family Processes from Between-Family Differences

Understanding the factors that predict adolescent delinquency is a key topic in parenting research. An open question is whether prior results indicating relative differences between families reflect the dynamic processes occurring within families. Therefore, this study investigated concurrent and lagged associations among parental behavioral control, parental solicitation, adolescent disclosure, and adolescent delinquency by separating between-family and within-family effects in three-wave annual data (N = 1515; Mage = 13.01 years at T1; 50.6% girls). At the within-family level, parental behavioral control negatively predicted adolescent delinquency. Adolescent disclosure and delinquency, and adolescent disclosure and parental solicitation, reciprocally predicted each other. Parental solicitation negatively predicted parental behavioral control. The findings indicate a prominent role of adolescent disclosure in within-family processes concerning parental-adolescent communication and adolescent delinquency.

Strategic action or self-control? Adolescent information management and delinquency

Recent scholarship has begun to challenge the prevailing view that children are passive recipients of parental socialization, including the common belief that parental disciplinary practices are central to explaining adolescent problem behaviors. This research shows that children exert a significant influence over parents via information management, or the degree to which children disclose information about their behavior to parents. Despite the incorporation of child information management into contemporary models of parenting, significant theoretical and empirical concerns cast doubt on its utility over classic parent-centered approaches. The current paper addresses these concerns and adjudicates between disparate definitions of adolescent information management in two ways. First, it provides a theoretically grounded definition of information management as agentic behavior. Second, it specifies a model that tests definitions of secret keeping as agentic against a non-agentic definition of secret keeping supplied by criminological theories of self-control. The model is estimated with three four-wave cross-lagged panel models, which disentangle the interrelationships between parenting, child concealment of information, and child problem behavior in a sample of high risk youth. The results offer support for a definition of concealment as strategic and self-regarding, and have implications for research on delinquency, parent-child interactions, and child agency.

Negative reactions to monitoring: Do they undermine the ability of monitoring to protect adolescents?

This study focused on adolescents' negative reactions to parental monitoring to determine whether parents should avoid excessive monitoring because adolescents find monitoring behaviors to be over-controlling and privacy invasive. Adolescents (n = 242, M age = 15.4 years; 51% female) reported monitoring, negative reactions, warmth, antisocial behavior, depressive symptoms, and disclosure. Adolescents additionally reported antisocial behavior, depressive symptoms, and disclosure one to two years later. In cross-sectional analyses, less monitoring but more negative reactions were linked with less disclosure, suggesting that negative reactions can undermine parents' ability to obtain information. Although monitoring behaviors were not related to depressive symptoms, more negative reactions were linked with more depressive symptoms, suggesting that negative reactions also may increase depressive symptoms as a side effect of monitoring behavior. Negative reactions were not linked to antisocial behavior. There were no longitudinal links between negative reactions and changes in disclosure, antisocial behavior, or depressive symptoms.

A Longitudinal Study on the Effects of Parental Monitoring on Adolescent Antisocial Behaviors: The Moderating Role of Adolescent Empathy

In adolescence, youth antisocial behaviors reach a peak. Parents can use different strategies, such as parental solicitation and control, to monitor their children's activities and try to prevent or reduce their antisocial behaviors. However, it is still unclear if, and for which adolescents, these parental monitoring behaviors are effective. The aim of this study was to examine if the impact of parental solicitation and control on adolescent antisocial behaviors depends on adolescent empathy. In order to comprehensively address this aim, we tested the moderating effects of multiple dimensions (affective and cognitive) of both trait and state empathy. Participants were 379 Dutch adolescents (55.9% males) involved in a longitudinal study with their fathers and mothers. At T1 (conducted when adolescents were 17-year-old) adolescents filled self-report measures of antisocial behaviors and trait empathy during one home visit, while their state empathy was rated during a laboratory session. Furthermore, parents reported their own monitoring behaviors. At T2 (conducted 1 year later, when adolescents were 18-year-old), adolescents reported again on their antisocial behaviors. Moderation analyses indicated that both affective and cognitive state empathy moderated the effects of parental solicitation on adolescent antisocial behaviors. Results highlighted that solicitation had unfavorable effects on antisocial behaviors in adolescents with high empathy whereas the opposite effect was found for adolescents with low empathy. In contrast, neither state nor trait empathy moderated the effects of control on adolescent antisocial behaviors. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

"Snooping" as a Distinct Parental Monitoring Strategy: Comparisons With Overt Solicitation and Control

Parents can use solicitation (asking questions) and control (disclosure rules) to obtain information about adolescents, but only if youths comply. Snooping might uncover additional information, but also strongly violates privacy expectations. Three studies of parents and adolescents examined distinctions between snooping, solicitation, and control. Differences existed in terms of factor structure and frequency (Studies 1-2), links to perceived invasion (Study 1), correlations with problematic communication, behavior, and relationships (Study 2), and parent-adolescent (dis)agreement about acceptability (Study 3). Snooping is a relatively infrequent monitoring behavior, compared to solicitation and control, but appears to be a stronger indicator of problems in adolescent and family functioning. We discuss implications regarding the necessity and appropriateness of particular parental monitoring behaviors.

Evidence of Factorial Validity of Parental Knowledge, Control and Solicitation, and Adolescent Disclosure Scales: When the Ordered Nature of Likert Scales Matters

For evaluating monitoring and parent-adolescent communication, a set of scales addressing parental knowledge, control and solicitation, and adolescent disclosure was proposed by Kerr and Stattin (2000). Although these scales have been widely disseminated, their psychometric proprieties have often been found to be unsatisfactory, raising questions about their validity. The current study examines whether their poor psychometric properties, which are mainly attributed to the relatively poor conceptual quality of the items, could have been caused by the use of less-than-optimal analytical estimation methods. A cross-validation approach is used on a sample of 1071 adolescents. Maximum likelihood (ML) is compared with the diagonal weighted least squares (DWLS) method, which is suitable for Likert scales. The results of the DWLS approach lead to a more optimal fit than that obtained using ML estimation. The DWLS methodology may represent a useful option for researchers using these scales because it corrects for their unreliability.

Patterns and Predictors of Mother-Adolescent Discrepancies across Family Constructs

Parent-child discrepancies pervade the family literature; they appear in reports of relationship dynamics (e.g., conflict; Laursen et al. 1998), parent and child behaviors (e.g., monitoring; De Los Reyes et al. 2010), and individual family members' beliefs (e.g., parental legitimate authority; Smetana 2011). Discrepancies are developmentally normative (Steinberg 2001) but also may be indicators of relationship and adjustment problems for teens (Ohannessian 2012). Because of this variation, it is important to consider the extent to which parent-child discrepancies are a function of both the dyad and the family construct considered. The present study contributed to our understanding of informant discrepancies in family relationships by considering the patterning, consistency, and correlates of mother-adolescent discrepancies across three family constructs that vary in their objectivity. Using person-centered analyses, discrepancies in adolescents' and mothers' ratings of parents' right to know about teens' activities, mothers' knowledge of them, and positive mother-adolescents relationships were examined in 167 middle class, primarily European American mother-adolescent dyads (M teen age = 15.68 years, SD = .64, 53 % female). Each construct was best described by three profiles, one where adolescents' standardized ratings were consistently higher than mothers', one showing the reverse, and one revealing little disagreement. Adolescent-reported problem behavior (but not depression), behavioral and psychological control, and mothers' wellbeing significantly predicted profile membership. Most dyads maintained consistent membership in a discrepancy profile across at least two family constructs. Results contribute to understanding the different sources of discrepancies in views of the family.

Iraqi, Syrian, and Palestinian Refugee Adolescents' Beliefs About Parental Authority Legitimacy and Its Correlates

This study examined intra- and interindividual variations in parental legitimacy beliefs in a sample of 883 Arab refugee adolescents (M(age) = 15.01 years, SD = 1.60), 277 Iraqis, 275 Syrians, and 331 Palestinians in Amman, Jordan. Confirmatory factor analyses showed distinct latent factors for moral-conventional, prudential, and personal legitimacy items. Older adolescents rated legitimacy lower for personal issues, but higher for prudential issues. Beliefs were associated with socioeconomic status (fathers' education, family size), particularly for personal issues, but were more pervasively associated with displacement-related experiences. Greater war trauma was associated with less prudential legitimacy for all youth and more authority legitimacy over moral-conventional issues for Syrian youth. Greater hopefulness was associated with more authority legitimacy over all but personal issues.

Associations among solicitation, relationship quality, and adolescents' disclosure and secrecy with mothers and best friends

Disclosure and secrecy with mothers and best friends about personal, bad behavior, and multifaceted (e.g., staying out late) activities were examined using daily diaries among 102 ethnically diverse, urban middle adolescents (M = 15.18 years, SD = .89). Adolescents disclosed more and kept fewer secrets from best friends than from mothers and more frequently disclosed and kept secrets about their personal than their bad behavior and multifaceted activities. Better daily relationship quality was associated with more disclosure about personal and multifaceted activities and less secrecy about bad behaviors for both mothers and best friends. Overall, when mothers solicited information, adolescents disclosed more but also kept more secrets from them, whereas best friends' solicitation was mostly associated with more disclosure.

Adolescent disclosure of information about peers: the mediating role of perceptions of parents' right to know

Following the important insight that what parents know about their adolescent offspring depends primarily on what the child tells them, this study examines how attitudes about what parents have a right to know mediate the associations between several factors (quality of parent-child relationships, time spent with family and peers, levels of antisocial and prosocial behaviors, and gender and age) and adolescents' disclosures about peer relations. In two studies of early and middle adolescents (Ns = 231, 249; M ages = 14.5, 13.0; 62.3, 51.8 % female; 53.7, 67.5 % European American), a new measure of right-to-know attitudes is derived and then applied to four facets of adolescents' experiences with peers: details of activities with peers, issues in specific relationships, and positive and negative peer characteristics. The findings indicate that adolescents are more inclined to disclose certain aspects of their peer relations than others, but these inclinations are related to several factors-especially the quality of mother-child relationships and involvement in antisocial behavior-and mediated by adolescents' attitudes regarding what parents have a right to know about peers. The results are related to autonomy development and parental oversight of adolescent peer interactions.