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Previous research has predominantly relied on single-informant reports to establish the association between parental control and children's anxiety. However, there remains ambiguity regarding the extent to which discrepancies in parent-child reports of parental control are related to children anxiety. This study examined parent-child perceived discrepancies in parental control and their association with children's anxiety, along with the moderated effect of parent-child closeness through cross-sectional and prospective analysis. The sample consisted of 790 children (M age  = 11.34, SD = 6.73, 45.60% for girls), with 741 father-child dyads and 760 mother-child dyads included. Data were analyzed using polynomial regressions with response surface analysis. The results indicated that children tended to perceive higher levels of parental psychological control and lower levels of behavioral control compared to their parents' perceptions. In the cross-sectional analysis, a significant association between greater incongruence in psychological/behavioral control and higher levels of children's anxiety at T1 was observed exclusively in father-child dyads. In prospective analysis, for both father-child and mother-child dyads, congruence in higher levels of psychological control was associated with higher levels of children's anxiety at T2, while congruence in higher levels of behavioral control was associated with lower levels of children's anxiety at T2. Additionally, greater incongruence in psychological/behavioral control was linked to higher levels of children's anxiety at T2. Furthermore, mother-child closeness emerged as a significant moderator such that perceived incongruence in psychological/behavioral control could not affect children's anxiety at T2 in the high mother-child closeness condition. These findings highlight the significance of considering parent-child congruence and incongruence when examining the impact of parental control on children's anxiety., (© 2024. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.)

Adolescents can perceive parenting quite differently than parents themselves and these discrepancies may relate to adolescent well-being. The current study aimed to explore how adolescents and parents perceive daily parental warmth and criticism and whether these perceptions and discrepancies relate to adolescents' daily positive and negative affect. The sample consisted of 80 adolescents (M age  = 15.9; 63.8% girls) and 151 parents (M age  = 49.4; 52.3% women) who completed four ecological momentary assessments per day for 14 consecutive days. In addition to adolescents' perception, not parents' perception by itself, but the extent to which this perception differed or overlapped with adolescents' perception was related to adolescent affect. These findings highlight the importance of including combined adolescents' and parents' perspectives when studying dynamic parenting processes., (© 2021. The Author(s).)

Previous studies have found discrepancies between parent and child reports of parental favoritism. Some studies have also found that these discrepancies have unique effects on children's psychosocial adjustment. Nonetheless, much is still unknown about discrepancies between parent-reports and child-reports of parental favoritism and how they are associated with children's development. The current study examines discrepancies in multi-informant reports on parental favoritism in relation to children's internalizing and externalizing problems. The sample consisted of 556 mother-child dyads and 554 father-child dyads (46% boys, M age  = 12.52 years, SD age  = 1.18). Polynomial regression analyses and response surface analyses were used to disentangle the effects of parent-child discrepancies in perceived parental favoritism. The results indicate that children reported higher parental favoritism than their parents. And the highest internalizing and externalizing problems occurred when both the mother and the child reported high maternal favoritism, and when both the father and the child report high paternal favoritism. Therefore, these findings partly support the assumptions based on the operations triad model. The findings also highlight the importance of the discrepancy between child- and parent-reports on parental favoritism in the development of children's internalizing and externalizing problems.

Recent evidence suggests parent-adolescent discrepancies regarding adolescent disclosure can provide insight into parent-child relations and adolescent adjustment. However, pathways linking discrepancies to adjustment are not well known. We tested a model linking parent-adolescent discrepancies in disclosure to adolescent substance use through affiliation with deviant peers. Using three annual waves of data from a community-based study (N = 357; 91% African American; 53% female; M age  = 13.13 years, SD = 1.62 years at baseline), findings revealed that adolescent-reported secrecy and deviant peer affiliation were positively associated with substance use one and two years later, respectively, but there was no evidence of mediation. The results highlight associations of adolescent secrecy and adjustment, and the role peers play in adolescent substance use behaviors.

Because loneliness is a subjective experience, it is often examined using self-reports. Yet, researchers have started to use other-reports to examine loneliness. As previous research suggests that discrepancies between self- and other views might have important implications for adolescents' mental health, the current study examines discrepancies in multi-informant reports on adolescents' loneliness in relation with prosocial behavior, aggression, and adolescents' parent-related loneliness. The sample consisted of 374 mother-adolescent dyads and 318 father-adolescent dyads (41.80% male, M age  = 15.67 years, SD = 1.25). Results indicated that informants used different reference points to assess adolescents' peer-related loneliness, but were otherwise comparable. Moreover, informant discrepancies were associated with greater adolescents' reported parent-related loneliness. The current study did not provide evidence that discrepancies were related to prosocial or aggressive behavior. The current study adds to the notion that other-reports on loneliness show substantial convergence with self-reports. In addition, this study indicates that the discrepancy between other- and self-reports on loneliness holds valuable information for adolescent socio-emotional adjustment.

Lonely adolescents report that they have poor social skills, but it is unknown whether this is due to an accurate perception of a social skills deficit, or a biased negative perception. This is an important distinction, as actual social skills deficits require different treatments than biased negative perceptions. In this study, we compared self-reported social skills evaluations with peer-reported social skills and meta-evaluations of social skills (i.e., adolescents' perceptions of how they believe their classmates evaluate them). Based on the social skills view, we expected negative relations between loneliness and these three forms of social skills evaluations. Based on the bias view, we expected lonely adolescents to have more negative self- and meta-evaluations compared to peer-evaluations of social skills. Participants were 1342 adolescents (48.64 % male, M age  = 13.95, SD = .54). All classmates rated each other in a round-robin design to obtain peer-evaluations. Self- and meta-evaluations were obtained using self-reports. Data were analyzed using polynomial regression analyses and response surface modeling. The results indicated that, when self-, peer- and meta-evaluations were similar, a greater sense of loneliness was related to poorer social skills. Loneliness was also related to larger discrepancies between self- and peer-evaluations of loneliness, but not related to the direction of these discrepancies. Thus, for some lonely adolescents, loneliness may be related to an actual social skills deficit, whereas for others a biased negative perception of one's own social skills or a mismatch with the environment may be related to their loneliness. This implies that different mechanisms may underlie loneliness, which has implications for interventions., Competing Interests: The authors report no conflict of interests. Ethical Approval All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. The IRB of the faculty of social sciences approved the study procedures (ECG2012-2711-701). Informed Consent Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

An extensive body of research has explored the effects of parental monitoring on adolescent outcomes, but studies consistently find substantial discrepancies between parent and adolescent reports of different monitoring behaviors. Little research has examined whether parents and adolescents are more or less discrepant when reporting on parents' rules or solicitation for different adolescent problem and health risk behaviors and few studies have explored potential explanatory variables to explicate individual variability in parent-adolescent discrepant reporting. To address this gap in the literature, the current study examined discrepancies in mother-adolescent reports of family rules and solicitation across five distinct adolescent behaviors: personal behaviors and four different risk behaviors (alcohol-related, cyber, over- and under-eating). Participants were 143 mother-adolescent dyads (Adolescent M age  = 14.42, SD = 1.73, range = 12-18, 81 % white, 60 % female). Mean-level discrepancies between maternal and adolescent reports significantly differed by category of adolescent behavior and also varied as a function of reported parental monitoring behavior (rules vs. solicitation). Discrepancies in mother-adolescent reports of behavior-specific rules and solicitation were positively associated with discrepancies in mother and adolescent judgments of the harmfulness of the activities. The results demonstrate that discrepancies in mother-adolescent reports of family process differ by category of adolescent behavior and may be undergirded by differences in mother and adolescent informational assumptions about the potential harm involved with different activities.

This article examined the role of caregiver messages about violence and exposure to neighborhood violence on adolescent aggression in light of research regarding discrepancies between parents and their children. Drawing upon data from an urban African American sample of 144 caregiver/early adolescent dyads (M = 12.99; SD = 0.93; 58.7 % female) we examined covariates of discrepancies between caregiver and adolescent reports of perceptions of violence as well as their association with adolescent aggression. Analyses suggested that concordance in perceptions of violence was associated with children's attitudes about violence and caregivers' perceptions of family communication. Structural equation modeling indicated a unique role for individual perceptions and suggested that agreement in awareness of neighborhood violence could be protective for early adolescent involvement in aggression., Competing Interests: The authors’ report no conflicts of interest.

Parent-adolescent discrepancies in family functioning play an important role in HIV risk behaviors among adolescents, yet longitudinal research with recent immigrant Hispanic families remains limited. This study tested the effects of trajectories of parent-adolescent family functioning discrepancies on HIV risk behaviors among recent-immigrant Hispanic adolescents. Additionally, we examined whether and to what extent trajectories of parent-adolescent family functioning discrepancies vary as a function of gender. We assessed family functioning of 302 Hispanic adolescents (47 % female) and their parent (70 % female) at six time points over a three-year period and computed latent discrepancy scores between parent and adolescent reports at each timepoint. Additionally, adolescents completed measures of sexual risk behaviors and alcohol use. We conducted a confirmatory factor analysis to determine the feasibility of collapsing parent and adolescent reported family functioning indicators onto a single latent discrepancy variable, tested model invariance over time, and conducted growth mixture modeling (GMM). GMM yielded a three-class solution for discrepancies: High-Increasing, High-Stable, and Low-Stable. Relative to the Low-Stable class, parent-adolescent dyads in the High-Increasing and High-Stable classes were at greater risk for adolescents reporting sexual debut at time 6. Additionally, the High-Stable class was at greater risk, relative to the Low-Stable class, in terms of adolescent lifetime alcohol use at 30 months post-baseline. Multiple group GMM indicated that trajectories of parent-adolescent family functioning trajectories did not vary by gender. Implications for future research and practice are discussed., Competing Interests: The authors report no conflict of interests.