Parental psychological control perceived in adolescence predicts jealousy toward romantic partners in emerging adulthood via insecure attachment

Abstract

Parental psychological control (PPC)'s association with romantic relationships and the mechanisms through which PPC impairs relationship qualities remain crucial questions to understanding PPC. To this end, we examine if insecure attachment at age 18 mediated the association between PPC perceived at age 16 and jealousy at age 22. Our results showed that PPC perceived at age 16 predicted attachment anxiety at age 18, which then predicted jealousy at age 22. Both mothers' and fathers' models show significant mediational paths, although only mothers' mediational paths remain significant when entered together with fathering in the model. The paths were significant regardless of the gender of the adolescents. The results suggest that adolescents of psychologically controlling parents may experience compromised attachment security during early emerging adulthood and carry that insecure attachment into their romantic relationships later in emerging adulthood. We discuss the implications for interventions and policy‐making.

Adolescent normative beliefs about aggression mediate the association between fathers’ psychological control in adolescence and physical aggression in emerging adulthood

“…Our results can provide a starting point for identifying areas of children's development that fPC predicts. As recent work showed that mPC (compared with fPC) perceived in adolescence uniquely contributed to their later attachment anxiety and jealousy in their romantic relationships (Choe et al, 2021) We did not find a significant direct effect from PPC perceived at age 13 to physical aggression at age 18 in our mediation models, though significant direct paths from fPC to physical aggression exist in the models without the mediator.…”

“…PPC has been argued to be universally detrimental to children's development (Soenens & Vansteenkiste, 2010). Consistently, several studies on PPC reported negative outcomes of PPC from both gender adolescents (e.g., Choe et al., 2020a; 2021). Hence examining the differences by the gender of adolescents can add to the literature: whether boys and girls develop differently after experiencing PPC or not and in which areas boys and girls present differences.…”

“…Previous research notes that fathering's role in children's development has been neglected (Lamb, 1975), although a growing literature has increasingly documented the importance of fathers in children's development (e.g., Cabrera et al., 2018). Given the scarcity of research on fathering especially in the PPC literature, fPC should be studied more separately from and together with mPC to better understand fathers’ role in children's personality and emotional development (Choe et al., 2021). The previous literature discussed the roles of fathers in children's belief formation (e.g., Prioste et al., 2017), yet research on PPC's impact on adolescents’ belief formation–especially fPC's contribution–has been scarce.…”

“…Previous research on fathers’ psychological control (fPC) argued that fPC mattered as much as mothers’ psychological control (mPC) (Rogers et al., 2003). However, PPC research has heavily focused on mPC (e.g., Choe et al., 2021). Ergo examining the role of fPC separately from mPC in adolescent belief formation about aggression can resolve a missing link in the previous research.…”

“…This line of research emphasizes unique roles of parents’ gender in children's development, on top of the shared variance of PPC. Recent work buttresses this argument; mPC that adolescents perceived uniquely contributed to attachment anxiety and jealousy in emerging adulthood whereas fPC that adolescents reported did not uniquely contribute to either attachment anxiety or jealousy (Choe et al., 2021). In this sense, the areas of physical aggression and adolescent belief formation on aggression may suggest a role of fPC.…”