Abstract
Research on parental rearing dimensions faced ethnocentric criticism for mainly focusing on adolescents in Western industrialized countries. Over the past decade, the phenomenon of anxious parenting, so called “helicopter parenting”, gained attention in popular media as well as scholarly publications in addition to support and psychological control. Whether these parenting dimensions, which were associated with different health outcomes in adolescents, were only occurring in the Western world or are visible cross-culturally, has not been sufficiently studied. Therefore, it is unclear whether these links exist also for adolescents from other parts of the world. Additionally, the involvement of fathers in child rearing continues to be neglected in adolescent psychopathology research. The current cross-cultural study tested the association of maternal and paternal rearing dimensions with youth internalizing and externalizing psychopathology in a sample of 2415 adolescents (56% female, 15.33 years, SD = 0.61) from eight countries (Argentina, France, Germany, Greece, Pakistan, Peru, Poland, and Turkey). Hierarchical regression models showed that internalizing symptomatology was associated with mothers’ support, psychological control, and anxious rearing as well as fathers’ psychological control up and above predictors like country and mother’s level of education. For predicting externalizing symptomatology, mother’s anxious rearing, mother’s psychological control, and father’s support as well as father’s psychological control were significant up and above adolescents’ gender, standard of living, and country. To conclude, across countries, anxious rearing and psychological control experienced from both parents were substantially linked with adolescent mental health.
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Acknowledgements
For the great support in data collection we would particularly like to extend our gratitude to Elias Besevegis, Spyridon Tantaros, Vassilis Pavlopoulos (University of Athens, Greece); Lyda Lannegrand-Willems, Cyrille Perchec (University of Bordeaux, France); Figen Çok (TED University, Turkey), Duygu Çavdar (University of Bristol, UK); Katarzyna Lubiewska, Karolina Głogowska (University Bydgoszcz, Poland); Cecilia Chau, Juan Carlos Saravia (Pontificia Universidad Católica del Peru, Lima, Peru); Iffat Rohail (Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan); and Santiago Resett (Universidad Nacional de Entre Rios, Entre Rios, Argentina).
Authors’ Contributions
ISK conceived of the study, developed its instruments and design, coordinated the study, drafted the manuscript, and interpretation of the data; KW performed the statistical analyses, interpreted the data, and drafted the manuscript. Both authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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The study received no funding.
Data Sharing and Declaration
The datasets generated and/or analyzed were compiled from researchers from different countries and contributors have access to their data. However, data of the current study are not publicly available but are available on reasonable request and with permission of Prof. Inge Seiffge-Krenke (seiffge-krenke@uni-mainz.de).
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The ethics board in each country approved the study. We complied with ethical standards and collected written informed consent from the adolescents and their parents.
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All procedures performed in this study involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.
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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants and their parents included in the study.
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Weitkamp, K., Seiffge-Krenke, I. The Association Between Parental Rearing Dimensions and Adolescent Psychopathology: A Cross-Cultural Study. J Youth Adolescence 48, 469–483 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-018-0928-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-018-0928-0