Domain-specific antecedents of parental psychological control and monitoring: the role of parenting beliefs and practices.

Abstract

This research examined the effects of domain-differentiated beliefs about legitimate parental authority and ratings of restrictive parental control on adolescent- and mother-reported psychological and behavioral control. The influence of parenting beliefs and practices regarding socially regulated (moral and conventional) and ambiguously personal (multifaceted and personal) issues was examined in 93 middle-class African American early adolescents (M = 13.11 years, SD = 1.29) and their mothers, who were followed longitudinally for 2 years. Domain-specific parenting beliefs and ratings predicted adolescent-reported maternal psychological control and parental monitoring, but the nature and direction of the relations differed. Adolescents who rated parents as more restrictive in their control of personal issues and who believed that parents should have less legitimate authority over these issues rated their mothers as higher in psychological control. In contrast, more adolescent-reported parental monitoring was associated with gender (being female) and adolescents' beliefs that parents have more legitimate authority to regulate personal issues. As expected, adolescent age and gender influenced mother-reported monitoring and psychological control; in addition, the effects of mothers' ratings of restrictive control on both psychological control and monitoring were moderated by gender. The results indicate that psychological control and monitoring can be understood in terms of the particular behaviors that are controlled, as well as the style in which control is exercised.