Family processes and adolescents’ adjustment: the dyadic contribution of mothers and fathers

Abstract Study 1: Mothers and Fathers’ Psychological Control Over Time: A Multilevel Dyadic Analysis Psychological Control (PC) refers to the control parents exert over their offspring through strategies that include love withdrawal, shaming and guilt induction that limit and invalidate the psychological and emotional experience of children and adolescents (Barber, 1996). According to developmental systems theories (McHale et al. 2004; Sameroff, 2010), both parents contribute to and affect parent-child interactions and child’s development. However, the literature reports contrasting results on how PC is used differently by mothers and fathers and many studies only evaluate maternal PC (Soenens et al., 2010). The present study aims to extend the literature on PC considering the contribution of both parents and analyzing the direct and reciprocal influences on the use of PC over time, by disentangling the role of mothers and fathers at both between and within dyads’ level. Participants were 147 Mothers-Fathers dyads were drawn from the cities of Rome and Naples (Italy) who provided data over 3 years. Participants were parents of middle adolescents averaging 13.51 years (Time 1), 14.60 years (Time 2), 15.54 years (Time 3). Parental PC was assessed via the Psychological Control and Autonomy Granting Scale; Barber et al. 1996; Silk et al., 2003). Two subscales are considered: Guilt Induction and Verbal Constrain. Random Intercept Cross Lagged Panel Models (RI-CLPM; Hamaker et al., 2015) were implemented in Mplus in order to disentangle within and between levels. Results showed that at a between level, parents with higher levels of Guilt Induction (and Verbal Constrain) across the three measurement periods tended to have their partners with higher levels of PC over the measurement periods, meaning that the association between maternal and paternal PC strategies is relatively stable over the course of three years. At a within-person level significant cross-lagged effects in the RI-CLPM were found in both models of Guilt Induction and Verbal Constrain, but in the latter case, reciprocal (cross-lagged) effects were found only for fathers. Implications for differences at the between and within level were discussed.