Developmental Antecedents of Proactive and Reactive Rebelliousness: The Role of Parenting Style, Childhood Adversity, and Attachment

Abstract

Adolescence is a time of developmental transition that for one in five young people is characterised by feelings of oppositionality, rebellion, and negativism. Despite the prevalent experience of teen turbulence and despite its significance within the phenomenological framework provided by reversal theory (RT), the childhood antecedents of rebelliousness in adolescence and adulthood have not been given extensive empirical attention within RT, although such work has been carried out using other constructs and theories. We examined recalled parenting style, childhood adversity, and attachment style in adulthood as correlates of proactive and reactive rebelliousness in a sample of 80 participants, aged 18 to 50 years. Each participant responded to a questionnaire package containing the revised Adult Attachment Scale, the Parental Bonding Instrument, the Childhood Experience of Care and Abuse Questionnaire, and the Negativism Dominance Scale. We found that paternal abusive parenting, followed by paternal indifferent parenting style, paternal neglect, and paternal antipathy were independently predictive of scores on proactive rebelliousness, the sensation-seeking form. Maternal and paternal indifferent parenting styles each were found to equivalently and independently predict scores on reactive rebelliousness, the interpersonal disaffection form. The results of this study suggest these two forms of rebelliousness may have distinctly different antecedents. A longitudinal study is needed to examine the potentially causal pathways that are suggested by the results of this cross-sectional research. We consider reversal theory explanations of these results and contrast them with complementary theoretical frameworks.

Controlling mothers, insecure daughters: parental style and adult attachment

“…Care was important only for the Resistance to Proximity dimension. This result is distinct from the current parental style literature, which focus most of the time only in Care, or in their joint influence of Control and Care (Wilhelm, Gillis & Parker, 2016;Kokkinos, 2013;McDermott & Barik, 2014;Timpano et al, 2015).…”

“…Bourne et al (2014) found that adult attachment avoidance was significantly negatively correlated with perceived paternal care, and adult anxious attachment was significantly positively correlated with paternal overprotection, but no relationships were found between maternal subscales and adult attachment. Low care and high controlling childhood is usually associated with discomfort with being close and intimate, thus preventing relationships in adulthood (Manassis, Owens, Adam, West, & Sheldon-Keller, 1999;McDermott & Barik, 2014).…”

“…The relationship between parenting characteristics and attachment is not new (Dinero et al, 2008;Hinnen et al, 2008;Bourne et al, 2014;McDermott & Barik, 2014). Notwithstanding, 95% of the research in behavioral science is not made in what it's called "the Majority World" (Kagitcibasi, 2012).…”