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Current research in the field of moral socialization needs to address more fully how combinations of discipline practices influence the internalization process. The present study examined young adults' retrospective reports concerning their mother's and father's disciplinary responses to remembered moral transgressions. Participants included 410 undergraduate students ( M age = 19.11 years; 79% female) who self-identified as White (74.9%), Hispanic (8.8%), Multiracial (8.8%), Black (3.2%), Asian (2.7%), and other (1.6%). Young adults provided narrative accounts of maternal and paternal responses to moral transgressions, then rated these responses in terms of their fairness and effectiveness. Discipline responses were coded for the presence of inductive discipline, mild punishment, or their combination. Results indicated that mother's use of inductive discipline with (and without) the presence of mild punishment was viewed as more appropriate than mild punishment used alone. Importantly, inductive discipline combined with mild punishment was viewed as more acceptable than (and equally effective as) inductive discipline alone. Findings for fathers were more limited, suggesting only that inductive discipline when used without mild punishment was viewed as more acceptable than mild punishment alone. Overall, mothers' use of induction with mild punishment in response to their adolescents' moral transgressions may not undermine the internalization of inductive messages and may even enhance its perceived appropriateness.

In line with increasing calls for within-family analyses of monitoring processes, this study examined profiles of (combined) adolescent information management strategies and parent knowledge-gathering strategies among 174 families with middle adolescents (Mage = 15.7 years; 164 mother-teen and 112 father-teen dyads). Three mother-adolescent profiles (open, intrusive, indirect) and two father-adolescent profiles (reserved, covert) emerged, with voluntary disclosure and snooping particularly differentiating profiles and fathers reporting gaining more knowledge from others. Profile membership was associated with adjustment and relationship quality both concurrently and over one year, controlling for prior levels. For mother-teen dyads, open communicators reported less behavioral control over time, intrusive communicators reported more negative interactions concurrently and greater depression and less maternal knowledge over time, and indirect communicators reported more problem behavior over time. For father-teen dyads, covert communicators reported more problem behavior concurrently and more negative interactions over time. Profile membership in mother-teen and father-teen dyads was not significantly associated. Results confirm the importance of disclosure and the problematic nature of snooping, while highlighting diverse ways that monitoring processes play out within families. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

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.

Middle class mothers (n = 169) of middle adolescents (M = 15.69 years old) in the U.S. rated how much they want to know and responded qualitatively about what they "always" and "never" want to know about adolescents' risky prudential (e.g., drinking alcohol, using illegal drugs), personal (e.g., teens' private conversations), and multifaceted (involving overlapping prudential and personal concerns) activities. Latent growth curve modeling over one year showed that mothers wanted to know most about prudential, less about multifaceted, and least about personal activities; wanting to know declined over time for each type of activity, but less for prudential than for other activities. With teen problem behavior controlled, psychologically controlling parenting, supportive and negative interactions with teens, knowledge of adolescents' activities, and teens' age were associated with individual differences in mothers' initial ratings and trajectories of wanting to know, although results varied by domain and were moderated by teen gender., (Copyright © 2014 The Foundation for Professionals in Services for Adolescents. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Some parents may engage in overparenting, often characterized as overprotection, to ensure their college student's academic success, yet, findings show that such parental efforts undermine performance. In the present study, we propose that there are interpersonal (parental hostility) and intrapersonal factors (depression and self-regulation) that act as mechanisms through which anxious overprotective parenting leads to diminished emerging adult academic confidence. Emerging adults (N = 967; 75.6% women; M age = 18.71, SD =.94) who were primarily in their first (60.5%) or second (35.7%) year of college completed measures of academic confidence (academic adjustment, academic efficacy, confidence in graduating), reports of mothers' and fathers' anxious overprotective parenting, perceptions of maternal and paternal hostility, depression, and self-regulation. Employing a double mediation structural equation model, results revealed that anxious maternal and paternal overprotective parenting operated through perceived parental hostility to intrapersonal processes (depression, self-regulation) in predicting academic confidence. Maternal and paternal hostility, in particular, was paramount as an interpersonal mediator through which overprotective parenting led to emerging adult intrapersonal and academic outcomes. Although cross-sectional, the current findings are suggestive of the developmental cascade model (Masten & Cicchetti, 2010), whereby diminished family dynamics are associated with internalizing symptoms and self-regulatory issues, which, in turn, are linked with lower academic achievement in children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective. Vignette-based research shows that youth evaluate parental guilt induction (GI) differently depending on the type of issue over which guilt is induced. However, domain differences in the prevalence and associations of parental GI have not been examined in real-world parenting behavior. This study examined the utility of a novel measure of domain-differentiated parental guilt induction (DDPGI) focusing on its psychometric properties and correlates. Design. Surveys were completed by 123 U.S. adolescents (Mage = 13.99 years, 54% female, 53% European American) and their mothers. Analyses included factor analysis and invariance tests, then structural equation modeling. Results. Consistent with social domain theory, maternal GI over legitimately regulated issues (moral, conventional, prudential) and personal issues were statistically separable and had differential associations with parenting and youth adjustment. When reported by adolescents, maternal GI over legitimately regulated issues was uniquely associated with more inductive discipline, adolescent empathy, perspective-taking, and moral self-relevance. In contrast, maternal GI over personal issues, especially at high levels, was uniquely associated with more maternal psychological control, maladaptive guilt induction, adolescent adjustment problems, and fewer adolescent moral cognitions and emotions. When reported by mothers, maternal GI showed no significant links with youth adjustment and positive associations between legitimately regulated guilt induction and both adaptive and maladaptive parenting behaviors. Conclusions. Results highlight the importance of measuring parental GI as its own construct, considering the topics over which guilt is induced when conceptualizing the parenting practice as positive or negative, and recognizing family member differences in perceptions of GI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parent–adolescent relationships are related to adolescents' disclosure and concealment, but these associations may represent between-family differences (e.g., families with more negative interactions have adolescents who disclose less) or within-family processes (e.g., when a family has more negative interactions, their adolescent discloses less). This study used cross-lagged panel modeling (CLPM) and random-intercept cross-lagged panel modeling (RI-CLPM) to separate these elements. U.S. adolescents (N = 214, Mage = 16.0, 52% female) reported on their disclosure, concealment, positive relationships, and negative interactions with mothers 3 times over a year. Consistent with prior research, adolescent disclosure was transactionally associated with more positive and less negative relationships with mothers over time in between-family (CLPM) analyses. However, in the within-family (RI-CLPM) analyses, which controlled for the fact that more positive and less negative families had adolescents who disclosed more, changes in relationship quality within a family were not linked with changes in disclosure. In contrast, negative interactions and greater concealment were reciprocally related over time both between families and within families, even when considering that families with more negative interactions also had adolescents who concealed more. Positive relationships were associated with less adolescent concealment, but only relative to other families (at the between level) and not over time. Results confirm the importance of examining disclosure and concealment as separate processes, particularly at the within-family level, and indicate that the cycle of concealment and negative interactions among troubled families may be a particularly ripe area for intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parental induction of empathy-related guilt plays an important role in children's moral development. However, guilt induction can also be psychologically controlling and detrimental for youth adjustment. This study provided a more nuanced view of parental guilt induction by examining how the nature of a child's misdeed and the structure and content of the parental guilt inductive statement impact children's perceptions of it. Using hypothetical vignettes, this study experimentally examined the impact of the type (domain) of child behavior, highlighted victim, and focus of parental criticism on 156 children's and early and middle adolescents' (age: Ms = 8.82, 12.11, and 15.84 years) perceptions of maternal guilt induction. Attributions of guilt and shame increased most for younger children, when mothers focused on indirect harm to themselves about personal issues, and when mothers criticized their child as a person (shame only). Youth evaluated guilt induction least positively for personal issues and when mothers criticized the child's personality while focusing on indirect harm to themselves. With age, youth were less accepting of maternal guilt induction and more likely to endorse negative and parent-centered intentions, especially for personal issues. Older youth also drew less distinction between guilt induction over multifaceted and personal issues. Guilt induction over moral issues was generally perceived most positively. Additional interactions also emerged. These findings suggest that the meaning and effects of guilt induction on children's development may depend on the way in which it is enacted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]