Abstract
Parents are central figures in youth’s career decision-making processes. One of their key roles is to foster youth’s career decision-making agency by supporting their motivational resources—of autonomy and competence. While the findings on parent-driven effects (how parenting behaviors predict youth’s agency) are well documented, little is known about the opposite direction—child-driven effects (how youth’s agency predicts parenting behaviors)—and the bidirectionality, particularly during postsecondary transitions. To address this gap, the current study examined (1) reciprocal linkages between mothers’ and fathers’ parenting behaviors (i.e., need support and control) and youth’s agency (i.e., autonomy and competence) and (2) whether such linkages are moderated by the parent’s gender and timing. Participants were 642 French-Canadian youths (54% girls; Mage = 14.2) who annually reported on parenting behaviors and career decision-making agency for 5 years, from Secondary 3 to 2 years postsecondary. For analysis, random-intercept cross-lagged panel models were estimated to disentangle the between- and within-family processes. The results showed that youth’s career decision-making competence develops in reciprocal transactions with parental need support in an upward spiral, while autonomy development is primarily driven by need support. Limited evidence was found for the moderating effects of parents’ gender and youth’s transition periods. Preregistration: the present study was preregistered (the study design, hypotheses, and target analyses). The preregistration can be found in https://osf.io/c5hak. Any deviations from the preregistration can be found in the Online Supplemental Materials.
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Notes
Despite identity being a separate and broader concept than career development, in this study, the literature on identity development was consulted, because these two hierarchical processes (i.e., career constitutes a domain of one’s identity) share some overlapping themes and principles such as exploration and commitment; and career identity likely takes a large weight in one’s general identity development, particularly during the postsecondary transition (Marttinen et al., 2018).
Cross-lagged effects in CLPM reflect whether a within-family change in y (within-family variation) is predicted by the family’s prior deviation from the group mean of x (between-family variation), controlling for one’s prior deviation from the group mean of y (between-family variation).
In the Quebec education system, six years of elementary education is followed by five years of secondary education. Upon earning a high school diploma, students can either enter the job market or go to college (2 years for pre-university programs or 3 years for technical programs).
In the model involving need support, the random intercept of paternal need support had a variance not different from 0, S2 = 0.30 [-0.09, 0.68], p = 0.130. This result suggests that there is little to no variance to be decomposed into within- and between-family levels (when associated with competence) and that all participants’ level of paternal need support may fluctuate around the same grand mean over time.
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Authors’ Contributions
J.S.A. conceived of the study, performed the data analyses, interpreted the findings, and drafted the manuscript; C.F.R. participated in the interpretation of the results, provided feedback on the manuscript, and coordinated the data collection; A.P. participated in the interpretation of the results and provided feedback on the manuscript; S.D. provided feedback on the manuscript; F.G. provided feedback on the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
Funding
This study was supported by the Canada Research Chair Program and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (grants # 410-2010-0902 and 435-2013-0467). The authors have no conflict of interest to disclose. We acknowledge prior use of a part of this dataset in the following article: Ahn, J. S., Plamondon, A., & Ratelle, C. F. (2022). Different ways to support and thwart autonomy: Parenting profiles and adolescents’ career decision-making. Journal of Family Psychology. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/fam0000982. However, no prior study used all five waves of data, and none of the results reported in this study overlap with an existing study.
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Ahn, J.S., Ratelle, C.F., Plamondon, A. et al. Testing Reciprocal Associations between Parenting and Youth’s Motivational Resources of Career Decision-Making Agency during the Postsecondary Transition. J Youth Adolescence 51, 2396–2410 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-022-01672-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-022-01672-8