The Association Between Parenting Type as Perceived by First-Year Middle School Adolescents and Adaptive Competencies

Abstract

Objectives: This study is intended to 1) explore parenting types as perceived by first-year middle school adolescents and 2) investigate the relationship between parenting types and both academic competencies (academic engagement and academic helplessness) and socio-emotional competencies (self-esteem, emotional perception, cooperation, and peer relations) of adolescents.Methods: Data from the fourth wave of the fourth-grade panel of the Korean Children and Youth Panel Study 2018 were used for this study. A total of 2,219 data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and a three-step latent profile analysis.Results: Parenting attitudes as perceived by first-year middle school adolescents were categorized into four groups: authoritative (33.3%), ambivalent (7.0%), average (50.5%), and uninvolved (9.2%). Adolescents who perceived authoritative parenting exhibited the highest adaptive competencies, while those perceiving uninvolved parenting displayed the lowest. Adolescents who perceived ambivalent parenting showed varying outcomes based on competency variables, as they demonstrated the highest levels of both academic engagement and academic helplessness, along with the lowest level of emotional perception among the four identified groups.Conclusion: This study 1) confirmed the existence of an ambivalent parenting type that is distinct from that identified in previous studies and 2) empirically demonstrated the relationship between authoritative and consistent parenting and optimal developmental outcomes in early adolescence. The results indicate that when examining the impact of parenting on adolescents’ development, it is important to consider comprehensive parenting types rather than specific dimensions of parenting attitudes. Furthermore, the results offer practical implications for parent education tailored to characteristics of parenting types.