Abstract
Adolescence is a vulnerable period for psychopathology development, and certain parenting styles are consistent and robust predictors of a broad range of mental health outcomes. The mechanisms through which maladaptive parenting styles affect the development of psychopathology are assumed to be largely social in nature. Yet, the social mechanisms linking parenting to psychopathology are unexplored at arguably the most important level of functioning: daily life. This study aims to identify the associations between three parenting styles, and the experience of daily-life social interactions. Furthermore, we aim to explore the extent to which these parenting styles and altered daily-life social experiences are associated with psychopathology. In this study, we recruited a sample of N = 1,913 adolescents (63.3% girls; mean age = 13.7, age range = 11 to 20) as part of the first wave of the longitudinal cohort study “SIGMA”. Parenting styles (psychological control, responsiveness, and autonomy support) and psychopathology symptoms were assessed using a retrospective questionnaire battery. The experienced quality of social interactions in different types of company was assessed using the experience sampling method, ten times per day for 6 days. Direct associations between parenting styles and general quality of daily-life social experiences were tested using a three-level linear model, revealing significant associations between social experiences and different parenting styles. When interaction effects were added to this model, we found that maternal responsiveness and paternal psychological control mainly related to altered qualities of social interactions with parents, while paternal autonomy support was associated with better experiences of non-family social interactions. Finally, an exploratory path analysis highlighted how both paternal autonomy support and altered quality of non-family interactions are uniquely associated with psychopathology levels. These findings demonstrate the general and pervasive effects of maladaptive parenting styles, as parenting seems to broadly affect adolescents' interactions with different types of social partners in everyday life. Moreover, they illustrate a potential mediated relationship in which altered daily-life social interactions could drive the development of psychopathology. A stronger focus may be required on the role of altered day-to-day social experiences in the prevention and potentially, the treatment, of adolescent psychopathology.
Highlights
Mental health problems are strongly shaped by the specific manners in which children have been raised, as certain parenting dimensions are strong and robust predictors of a broad range of psychopathological symptoms
Research employing Experience Sampling Method (ESM) to study social processes has already identified how daily well-being and the quality of daily social interactions are linked to people’s parenting experiences [15, 21,22,23], while there is increasing evidence for the relationship between psychopathology symptoms and altered experiences of social interactions [22,23,24,25]. These studies indicate how, generally, both parenting experiences and psychopathology relate more to an altered quality of social interactions rather than to changes in the quantity of social behaviors. These findings suggest that the mediating role of social processes in the relationship between parenting and psychopathology can be reliably assessed at the level of daily life, and that this mediating role is likely determined more by altered subjective social experiences than by differences in social behaviors
Psychopathology is relatively undifferentiated during adolescence [39]—and this is reflected in the high intercorrelations between psychopathology dimensions that we found in earlier factor analysis on psychopathology symptoms in the adolescents of this sample [22]
Summary
Mental health problems are strongly shaped by the specific manners in which children have been raised, as certain parenting dimensions are strong and robust predictors of a broad range of psychopathological symptoms. Concurrent and longitudinal evidence has emphasized the maladaptive effects on child and adolescent development of parental psychological control, which is characterized by control that undermines children’s emotional experience and expression and involves, e.g., love withdrawal and guilt induction [1]. Parental autonomy support is another type of parenting assumed to be positively related to children’s adjustment, and is characterized by, e.g., parents’ allowing their children to make their own choices, and acknowledging children’s own perspective [3]. As such, these positive parenting dimensions are hypothesized to be associated with more adaptive psychosocial development. Ample previous research has highlighted how parental psychological control is a unique risk factor for the development of internalizing psychopathology [4,5,6,7,8], while parental responsiveness and autonomy support are protective against the development of psychiatric symptoms [7, 9, 10]
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