Antecedents of parental psychological control: A narrative review grounded in Self-Determination Theory perspective

Abstract

Self-determination theory has become a consolidated theoretical framework to deepen the psychological control construct. Numerous studies have widely investigated the consequences of the use of this parenting strategy during the life cycle. Although studies focused on the antecedents of parental psychological control are not so numerous, they provide an interesting picture that needs to be systematized and organized. For this reason, this narra-tive review was aimed at describing the studies on the antecedents of psychological control that used SDT as a theoretical framework. These studies were structured according to three categories: Parental Characteristics (or pressure from within), Child Characteristics (pres-sure from below), and Family Social Environment Characteristics (pressure from above). The results highlighted a wealth of studies in each category and indicating the need to con-tinue this line of studies in the future through the integration of the different types of ante-cedents too.