Abstract
Parental behaviors may shape levels of psychopathic traits and antisocial outcomes among youth. To better evaluate the potential causality of these associations, we used eight follow-ups from the Pathways to Desistance study of 1354 offending adolescents (14.3% female; 40.1% black) and examined whether within-individual variation in parenting over time was associated with within-individual variation in psychopathic traits and offending. Multilevel regression models were adjusted for age, gender, ethnicity, contact with parental figure, and self-reported offending. Adolescent self-reported parental warmth was associated with lower psychopathic traits, and parental hostility with higher psychopathic traits. The results indicated that the more supportive and nurturing the parent, the lower the levels of psychopathic traits, whereas the more hostile the parent, the higher the levels, respectively. In addition, self-reported offending was predicted by higher parental hostility and lower maternal warmth. In time-lagged analysis, psychopathic traits did not predict parental behaviors. In young offenders parental warmth may protect against development of psychopathic traits in adolescence, whereas parental hostility may strengthen these traits. We conclude, that parenting quality matters in adolescence. Warm parenting style at this developmental period associates with lower psychopathic features among young offenders possibly lowering the risk of further criminal activity.
Highlights
In the Pathways to Desistance study among adolescents (Ray, 2018), parental warmth was one of the social factors associated with lower average callousness and unemotionality (CU) traits, but when parental warmth was used as a time-varying covariate, there was no consistent associations with CU traits
There is a growing evidence that particular environmental factors such as parental behaviors may contribute the levels of youth psychopathic traits, both behavioral expressions and affective features called CU traits (Hawes et al, 2014; Pardini et al, 2007; Waller et al, 2013)
Parental warmth and hostility during adolescence are less studied, effects of parenting are suggested to be strong in different developmental stages in early, middle and late childhood (Gardner et al, 2019), and parental behaviors associate with the levels of psychopathic traits in adolescence (Buck, 2015; Bisby et al, 2017)
Summary
Harsh and coercive parenting has been linked to conduct problems more often among youth with low rather than high CU traits (Lynam et al, 2008; Pasalich et al, 2011; Viding et al, 2009), data show associations between psychopathiclike traits emerging in early adolescence and childhood negative parenting (Barker et al, 2011; Pardini et al, 2007; Tuvblad et al, 2013).
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