Mothers’ and Fathers’ Behavior, Adolescents’ Self-Representations, and Adolescents’ Adjustment:

Abstract

The goals in this study were to examine the differential association of mothers’ and of fathers’warm/supportive and hostile behavior with adolescents’school functioning and problem behavior and to consider both the direct and indirect processes whereby parents’behavior is related to those domains of adolescents’adjustment. Specifically, one aim was to examine the degree to which adolescents’ self-representations of adaptive sociability and behavioral reactivity mediate the relations of parents’warm/supportive and hostile behavior with adolescents’school functioning and problem behavior. Participants were 76 two-parent families with a seventh-grade adolescent. Adolescents’reports and parents’reports of the study variables were used in the statistical analyses. Models predicting problem behavior explained more variance than did those predicting school functioning. The results indicated that adolescents’ self-representations, in part, mediated the associations between parents’ behavior and adolescents’ adjustment. Results attest to the importance of external and internal regulators of young adolescents’ behavior.