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Perceived Parental Acceptance-Rejection and Children’s Psychological Adjustment: The Moderating Effects of Sex and Age

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Abstract

Although numerous studies have confirmed the relation between parental rejection and the psychological adjustment of children, few have explored the potential moderating effects of children’s age and sex on this relation, nor considered maternal and paternal rejection separately. In order to further examine this relation, psychological adjustment and perceived parental rejection were examined among 983 school children aged 9–18 years (54% girls). The Personality Adjustment Questionnaire (PAQ) and the Parental Acceptance-Rejection Questionnaire (PARQ) were used. Hierarchical regression analyses were conducted and post hoc analyses were performed to examine any significant interactions between the investigated variables. The results confirm that perceived rejection by both parents is significantly associated with several dimensions of children’s psychological adjustment. Moreover, this relation was moderated by children’s sex and age for some adjustment dimensions. Perceived parental rejection tended to have a more robust effect on daughters than on sons and on younger children (boys and girls) than on older children. In addition, maternal rejection contributed to a greater extent to the negative self-esteem and the negative self-adequacy of younger children compared to older children. Besides, paternal rejection contributed to a greater extent to the emotional instability and the negative self-adequacy of girls compared to boys. Understanding this relation and its moderators at early stages can help design accurate prevention and intervention programs within a family setting. This knowledge will help professionals focus on specific and suitable adjustment dimensions according to a child’s sex and at an appropriate stage of the developmental process, and help children avoid the development of future negative psychological outcomes.

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Author Contributions

I.R.U. collaborated with the design and execution of the study, analyzed the data, and wrote the results. M.J.G.C. collaborated with the execution of the study and the writing and editing of the final manuscript. V.B.G. designed the study and collaborated with the execution and writing of the study. M.A.C. designed and executed the study, assisted with the data analyses, and collaborated with the writing of the study.

Funding

The authors disclose receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research is included in the Project PSI2011-28925 and is supported by a grant from the Ministry of Science and Innovation of Spain.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Personality, Assessment and Psychological Treatment, Faculty of Psychology, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED), Juan del Rosal, 10, Madrid, 28040, Spain

    Isabel Ramírez-Uclés, Victoria del Barrio-Gándara & Miguel Ángel Carrasco

  2. Department of Psychology, Faculty of Health Sciences and Education, Madrid Open University (MOU), Madrid, Spain

    María José González-Calderón

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  1. Isabel Ramírez-Uclés
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  2. María José González-Calderón
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  3. Victoria del Barrio-Gándara
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  4. Miguel Ángel Carrasco
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Correspondence to Isabel Ramírez-Uclés.

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All procedures performed in the 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. Besides, the Research Ethics Board of the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED) authorized this research. This article does not contain any studies with animals performed by any of the authors.

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Ramírez-Uclés, I., González-Calderón, M.J., del Barrio-Gándara, V. et al. Perceived Parental Acceptance-Rejection and Children’s Psychological Adjustment: The Moderating Effects of Sex and Age. J Child Fam Stud 27, 1336–1348 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-017-0975-2

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