Parenting Styles and Aggressive Adolescents: Relationships with Self-esteem and Personal Maladjustment

Abstract

A B S T R A C TCurrent emergent studies are seriously questioning if parental strictness contributes to adolescent adjustment. This study examined whether the relationship between authoritative (warmth and strictness), authoritarian (strictness without warmth), indulgent (warmth without strictness), and neglectful (neither warmth nor strictness) parenting styles shows equal or different pattern of adjustment and maladjustment for aggressive and non-aggressive adolescents. The sample consisted of 969 Spanish adolescents, 554 females (57.2%) and 415 males, ranging from 12 to 17 years old. Families were classified into one of four typologies by their scores on warmth and strictness, and the adolescents were grouped by their aggressiveness (low vs. high). Adolescent adjustment was captured with three self-esteem indicators (emotional, physical, and family) and personal maladjustment with five indicators (negative self-esteem, negative self-adequacy, emotional irresponsiveness, emotional instability, and negative worldview). It was tested main and interaction effects between parenting and aggressiveness considering also sex and age factors. Findings showed that aggressive adolescents always had the worst socialization outcomes (i.e., the lowest self-esteem and the highest personal maladjustment). Aggressive and non-aggressive adolescents have a common pattern: both, indulgent and authoritative parenting styles were always associated with better outcomes than either authoritarian or neglectful parenting, but indulgent parenting style was associated with the best outcomes across all the criteria. In contrast with previous evidence about the idea that parental strictness and imposition might be beneficial to raise aggressive adolescents, present findings highlight the positive impact of parental warmth even with aggressive adolescents. Implications for family interventions were considered. Los estilos parentales y los adolescentes agresivos: su relación con la autoestima y el desajuste personal R E S U M E NInvestigaciones emergentes cuestionan que la severidad parental contribuya al ajuste del adolescente. Este estudio examina si la relación entre los estilos parentales autorizativo (afecto y severidad), autoritario (severidad sin afecto), indulgente (afecto sin severidad) y negligente (ni afecto ni severidad) presenta patrones de ajuste y desajuste iguales o diferentes en adolescentes agresivos y no agresivos. Participaron 969 adolescentes españoles, 554 mujeres (57.2%) y 415 varones, de 12 a 17 años. Las familias se clasificaron en un estilo parental según sus puntuaciones en afecto y severidad y los adolescentes se agruparon por agresividad (baja vs. alta). Se captó el ajuste mediante tres indicadores de autoestima (emocional, física y familiar) y el desajuste personal con cinco indicadores (autoestima negativa, autoeficacia negativa, falta de respuesta emocional, inestabilidad emocional y visión negativa del mundo). Se probaron efectos principales y de interacción para estilos parentales y agresividad, considerando ...

Parenting Styles, Internalization of Values and Self-Esteem: A Cross-Cultural Study in Spain, Portugal and Brazil

“…It is argued that, in these horizontal collectivist cultures, parental imposition and strictness might be negatively perceived by children. The results of the study are in line with some previous studies that have shown that the indulgent style (i.e., warmth without strictness) provides important benefits in terms of psychosocial adjustment for adolescents, including greater school adjustment [106] and optimal learning strategies [97], psychosocial development [95] or environmental empathy and connectedness with nature [84], and protection against alcohol use and abuse [61], marijuana and tobacco [95], personal maladjustment [65] or traditional bullying and cyberbullying victimization [27].…”

“…The minimum sample size required for conventional statistical errors type I, α = 0.05, and type II, β = 0.05, was calculated with a priori power analysis [63,64], it was fixed at a medium-small effect size (f = 0.17, estimated from ANOVAs (Analysis of Variance) by Lamborn et al, 1991 [41]) in an univariate F-test between the four parenting style groups [27,65]. A priori power analyses (α = 0.05, 1 -β = 0.95, and f = 0.17) showed a minimum sample size of 600 participants [35,51].…”

“I Want My Mum to Know That I Am a Good Guy …”: A Thematic Analysis of the Accounts of Adolescents Who Exhibit Child-to-Parent Violence in the United Kingdom

“…Furthermore, the findings regarding adolescents' emotional states (e.g. a sense of being difficult to cope with) and the interplay with CPV, support previous evidence of CPV research (Ibabe et al, 2014a(Ibabe et al, , 2014bMartinez-Ferrer et al, 2018) as well as wider family research with both community samples (Perez-Gramaje, Garcia, Reyes, Serra, & Garcia, 2020;Garcia, Lopez-Fernandez, & Serra, 2018) and legal samples (Steinberg, Blatt-Eisengart & Cauffman, 2006). Poor psychosocial competence and maladjustment was found as well as hyperactivity, low impulse control and difficulties with interpersonal relationships.…”

Parenting Warmth and Strictness across Three Generations: Parenting Styles and Psychosocial Adjustment

“…In addition, some studies that examined parenting styles in European and Latin American countries found that indulgent parenting (warmth but not strictness) was related to optimal child development. Indulgent parenting (also labelled as permissive, characterized by warmth but not strictness) was related to equal or even better psychosocial adjustment than authoritative parenting, whereas authoritarian parenting (strictness but not warmth) and neglectful parenting (neither warmth nor strictness) have consistently been related to the worst psychosocial adjustment [ 26 , 27 , 28 ].…”