Abstract
The aim of the present study is to determine whether the influence of parenting style on children’s wellbeing is sustained during emerging adulthood. This is a stage in which young people, despite feeling themselves to be adults, often remain in the family home and continue to be financially dependent on their parents. Moreover, since parents’ beliefs, attitudes and behaviors are constructed and interpreted within their cultural milieu, the study also aims to explore the situation in Spain (SP) and Portugal (PT). Those two Southern Europe countries are representative of what is known as the “family welfare regime”, in which the family acts as the main provider of care and security not only during childhood, but also during emerging adulthood. Thus, the present study examines, from a cross-cultural perspective, the relationship between perceived parenting styles and psychological adjustment among a sample of 1047 emerging adults from Spain and Portugal. The results reveal that the most beneficial styles during this stage are the authoritative and permissive ones, with the authoritarian style being more closely related to psychological distress. The study highlights intercultural similarities and the positive role played by more symmetrical relationships in the adjustment of emerging adults in both countries.
Highlights
Parenting styles [1,2] probably constitute the most important conceptualization under which the effect of family socialization on children’s wellbeing has been studied
As Arnett himself points out [41], the way in which young people navigate towards adulthood and their experiences during this period vary greatly according to the macro cultural context in which they live and the social groups to which they belong. In accordance with this idea, the present study explores parenting styles in Spain and Portugal, two Southern European Countries in which the family context is important during emerging adulthood
In relation to the first aim of the study, similar distributions of parenting styles were found in both countries analyzed (Figure 1)
Summary
Parenting styles [1,2] probably constitute the most important conceptualization under which the effect of family socialization on children’s wellbeing has been studied. According to this conceptualization, parents can be divided into four groups, depending on the warmth and affection they show to their children and their level of control: authoritative (high warmth, high control), authoritarian (low warmth, high control), permissive (high warmth, low control) and neglectful (low warmth, low control). Between the two, are those children brought up in permissive and authoritarian homes, who have difficulties at different levels [7,11,12,13]
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