Parent−adolescent relationships, religiosity, and the social adjustment of Indonesian Muslim adolescents.

Abstract

Parent-adolescent relationships invariably occur within a complex cultural context that in some populations include strong religious influences. Using data from multiple sources that were analyzed using structural equation modeling, we found that parental warmth and parental religiosity predicted adolescent religiosity in a sample of 296 Indonesian 15-year-old adolescents. The significant interaction of parental warmth and parent religiosity indicated that parental warmth moderated the relation between parent religiosity and adolescent religiosity. We expanded this model to predict externalizing and prosocial behavior where direct paths from adolescent religiosity to outcomes were significant for prosocial but not antisocial behavior; parental warmth, parent religiosity, and their interaction did not predict either outcome. Adolescent religiosity was found to be a mediator of these relations between predictor and outcomes for prosocial but not antisocial behavior. These results suggest that, in Indonesia and perhaps other highly religious cultures, parent-adolescent relationships and social competence may be interconnected with religion.