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Perceived Parenting Style and Adolescent Adjustment: Revisiting Directions

of Effects and the Role of Parental Knowledge

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 Developmental Psychology © 2012 American Psychological Association
2012, Vol. 48, No. 6, 1540 –1553 0012-1649/12/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0027720

Perceived Parenting Style and Adolescent Adjustment:

Revisiting Directions of Effects and the Role of Parental Knowledge

Margaret Kerr, Håkan Stattin, and Metin Özdemir

Örebro University

In the present research on parenting and adolescent behavior, there is much focus on reciprocal,
bidirectional, and transactional processes, but parenting-style research still adheres to a unidirec-
tional perspective in which parents affect youth behavior but are unaffected by it. In addition, many
of the most cited parenting-style studies have used measures of parental behavioral control that are
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.

questionable because they include measures of parental knowledge. The goals of this study were to
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.

determine whether including knowledge items might have affected results of past studies and to test
the unidirectional assumption. Data were from 978 adolescents participating in a longitudinal study.
Parenting-style and adolescent adjustment measures at 2 time points were used, with a 2-year
interval between time points. A variety of internal and external adjustment measures were used.
Results showed that including knowledge items in measures of parental behavioral control elevated
links between behavioral control and adjustment. Thus, the results and conclusions of many of the
most highly cited studies are likely to have been stronger than if the measures had focused strictly
on parental behavior. In addition, adolescent adjustment predicted changes in authoritative and
neglectful parenting styles more robustly than these styles predicted changes in adolescent adjust-
ment. Adolescent adjustment also predicted changes in authoritativeness more robustly than author-
itativeness predicted changes in adjustment. Thus, parenting style cannot be seen as independent of
the adolescent. In summary, both the theoretical premises of parenting-style research and the prior
findings should be revisited.

Keywords: parenting style, authoritative parenting, internalizing and externalizing problems, disclosure,
parental knowledge

During adolescence, adjustment problems tend to emerge that
are uncommon in younger children, such as delinquent behav-
ior, loitering on the streets, depressive symptoms, and self-
esteem problems. At the same time, adolescents begin spending
much of their free time away from home, which makes it
difficult for parents to guide them through these problems. This
presents a challenge for parents of adolescents and makes
parenting adolescents an interesting phenomenon to understand.
Parenting can be seen as a unidirectional process in which
parents shape children’s and adolescents’ behaviors, or it can be
seen as an interactional process in which both parties are shaped
by the other. Theoretically, the interactional view has been
gaining ground since its appearance around 30 years ago (Bell,
1979; Maccoby, 1992; Patterson, 1982; Sameroff, 1975), and
ideas about transactional processes are now well developed (see
This article was published Online First March 26, 2012.
Margaret Kerr, Håkan Stattin, and Metin Özdemir, Youth and Society
(YeS), Center for Developmental Research, Örebro University, Sweden.
The data used in this article are from a longitudinal study, “10-to-18”
(Kerr, Stattin, & Kiesner, 2007), that was funded by the Swedish Research
Council. Work on this article was supported by grants from Riksbankens
Jubiliemsfonden and the Swedish Council for Working Life and Social
Research.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Margaret
Kerr, Youth and Society (YeS), Center for Developmental Research, JPS:
Psychology, 701 82 Örebro, Sweden. E-mail: margaret.kerr@oru.se
Kuczynski & Parkin, 2007; Sameroff, 2010). Empirical re-
search on parenting adolescents has been slow to catch up to
this shift in thinking, but a growing number of studies are now
examining reciprocal or transactional processes between par-
ents and adolescents. Still, in the most influential and widely
used paradigm for understanding parenting—parenting style—
this way of thinking is not represented. On the contrary, the
assumption has been that parenting style shapes adolescent
behavior but is largely or wholly unaffected by it.
Parenting Style and Adolescent Adjustment:
A Unidirectional Perspective
Parenting styles were first conceptualized to explain young
children’s social adjustment (Baumrind, 1967). The three styles of
parenting described in this work—authoritative, authoritarian, and
permissive—involved qualitative differences in parental behav-
iors, particularly parental control (Baumrind, 1968). Specifically,
although both authoritative and authoritarian parents were de-
scribed as highly controlling, authoritative parents encouraged
communication about their rules, whereas authoritarian parents
tended to shut down communication. Later, Maccoby and Martin
(1983) argued that Baumrind’s three styles and many other find-
ings in the parenting literature could be roughly subsumed into a
four-field table (i.e., four styles) with one axis representing con-
trolling, demanding behavior and the other representing warm,
responsive behavior. In both these views, bidirectional communi-

1540
 REVISITING PARENTING STYLE
cation played a role in authoritative parenting, but they were
unidirectional in that parenting style was thought to shape child
behaviors.
Parenting style was first applied to adolescent development in
the late 1980s (Dornbusch, Ritter, Leiderman, Roberts, & Fraleigh,
1987). Applied to adolescence, three dimensions of parenting style
have been considered important (see Steinberg, Mounts, Lamborn,
& Dornbusch, 1991). These have gone by different labels in the
literature, but they have sometimes been referred to simply as
warmth, control, and democracy (e.g., Steinberg, Lamborn, Dorn-
busch, & Darling, 1992). Warmth concerns emotional warmth and
responsiveness to the adolescent’s needs. Control, better termed
behavioral control to distinguish it from psychological control,
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concerns active monitoring and regulation of the adolescent’s
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
activities and associations. Democracy, more often labeled psy-
chological autonomy support, concerns parents’ willingness to
respect and encourage the adolescent’s autonomous thinking and
functioning. Parenting styles are constellations of these dimen-
sions, with authoritative parents, for example, being high on all
three and neglectful parents being low on all three. Conceptually,
the constellations are important, because the parenting behaviors
expressed in the individual dimensions are thought to have differ-
ent meanings according to the climate created by the other dimen-
sions.
In the body of work on parenting style and adolescent develop-
ment, the unidirectional perspective can be seen clearly. Concern-
ing theoretical work, one article published in the early 1990s
(Darling & Steinberg, 1993) is arguably the most important, as it
has been cited more often than any other work on the topic. In this
article, the unidirectional perspective was made explicit through
the discussion of parenting style as a characteristic of parents, and
that position was emphasized in a footnote:
Although some writers have treated parenting style as if it were a
developmental process, we disagree. A developmental process is
defined by interactions between the developing person and his or her
environment. Parenting style is a characteristic of the parent (i.e., it is
a feature of the child’s social environment), independent of charac-
teristics of the developing person. (Darling & Steinberg, 1993, p. 487)
Thus, the possibility of bidirectional or reciprocal influences was
specifically dismissed and a unidirectional perspective was specif-
ically endorsed. Concerning the most cited empirical works, many
of these have been based on one large, longitudinal study in which
parenting style was assessed only at the first wave (see Steinberg,
Elmen, & Mounts, 1989). The analyses, then, either were cross-
sectional (e.g., Fletcher, Darling, Steinberg, & Dornbusch, 1995;
Gray & Steinberg, 1999; Lamborn, Mounts, Steinberg, & Dorn-
busch, 1991) or used parenting to predict over-time changes in
youth behavior (e.g., Glasgow, Dornbusch, Troyer, Steinberg, &
Ritter, 1997; Steinberg et al., 1989; Steinberg, Lamborn, Darling,
Mounts, & Dornbusch, 1994; Steinberg, Lamborn, et al., 1992).
The broader literature on parenting style and adolescent adjust-
ment is consistent with these defining theoretical and empirical
works. At the time of this writing, we found close to 100
parenting-style studies using longitudinal data, and virtually all
tested models looking at parenting style as the cause of adolescent
adjustment. The exceptions, however, suggest reasons to question
the unidirectional perspective.
1541
Reasons to Question the Unidirectional Perspective
There are at least three compelling reasons to revisit and ques-
tion the parenting-style paradigm. One concerns methodology. The
measure of behavioral control (termed strictness-supervision) in
the most influential studies cited above contained items that might
have represented youth adjustment more than parenting, and as
such, might have built in relations between parenting and adjust-
ment. Specifically, questions about parents’ knowledge of youths’
daily activities made up close to 50% of the behavioral control
(i.e., strictness-supervision) measure (see Lamborn et al., 1991).
The use of these items was based on the assumption that knowl-
edge would primarily result from parents’ monitoring or behav-
ioral control efforts. More recent research, however, has revealed
that it results more from adolescent disclosure of information than
from parents’ monitoring or behavioral control efforts (Crouter,
Bumpus, Davis, & McHale, 2005; Keijsers, Branje, VanderValk,
& Meeus, 2010; Kerr & Stattin, 2000; Kerr, Stattin, & Burk, 2010;
Marshall, Tilton-Weaver, & Bosdet, 2005; Stattin & Kerr, 2000).
Moreover, disclosure is linked to a variety of internal and external
adjustment measures (Kerr & Stattin, 2000), perhaps because high
levels of disclosure reflect having little to hide from parents (i.e.,
being well adjusted). Consequently, using parental knowledge as a
measure of parenting is likely to build in relations between par-
enting and youth adjustment. Little is known about how parenting
style would have related to adolescent adjustment in the most
widely cited studies if the measures of behavioral control had not
contained knowledge items. This is a reason to revisit parenting
style, questioning the findings previously reported and the unidi-
rectional assumption underlying the research.
A second reason to revisit and question the parenting-style
paradigm is that the theoretical idea that parenting behavior is not
affected by a child or an adolescent stands in contradiction to ideas
about transactional processes that have appeared in the literature
for at least 35 years (e.g., Bell, 1979; Kuczynski & Parkin, 2007;
Sameroff, 1975, 2010). In a transactional process, the child’s
behavior changes the parent’s behavior, which in turn changes the
child’s behavior, and so on. The child-to-parent part of the trans-
action, which is missing in the parenting-style paradigm, has been
supported for various parental behaviors in experimental (for re-
views of early work, see Bell, 1968; Bell & Chapman, 1986) and
longitudinal research (see, e.g., Lytton, 1990, 2000, for reviews
and Pardini, 2008, for a recent special issue). This history of
empirical support for child-to-parent and bidirectional processes
suggests that parenting style, too, might be affected by the child’s
behavior.
A third reason to question the unidirectional assumption in the
parenting-style paradigm can be found in the small number of
published studies showing that adolescent behaviors predict over-
time changes in the individual parenting-style dimensions. Con-
cerning warmth and behavioral control, in several studies the
authors specifically questioned the directions of effects assumed in
parenting-style research and tested cross-lagged models (Huh,
Tristan, Wade, & Stice, 2006; Kerr & Stattin, 2003; Kerr, Stattin,
& Pakalniskeine, 2008; Stice & Barrera, 1995). In these studies,
adjustment measures such as substance use, delinquency, problem
behavior at home, poor school adjustment, and deviant peer asso-
ciation significantly predicted decreases over time in parental
warmth and behavioral control. Studies from Hong Kong and
 1542 KERR, STATTIN, AND ÖZDEMIR
China have also shown over-time changes in these parenting-style
dimensions, though not always in the same direction as in the
above-mentioned studies (Chen, Liu, & Li, 2000; Shek, 2002).
What they all suggest, however, is that warmth and behavioral
control are not independent of the adolescent. Concerning the third
dimension— democracy, or psychological autonomy support—
cross-sectional and longitudinal findings have shown that both
adolescent and parental characteristics add significantly to the
prediction of adolescents’ perceptions of democratic parenting
(Persson, Stattin, & Kerr, 2004; Stattin, Persson, Burk, & Kerr,
2011). Furthermore, in a recent study of reciprocal effects (Pardini,
Fite, & Burke, 2008), one of the parenting measures, parental
communication, which was similar in its operationalization to
psychological autonomy support, showed strong reciprocal rela-
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tions over time with adolescent conduct problems. There is mount-
ing evidence, then, that all three dimensions of parenting style are
in part influenced by adolescent behavior. In light of these find-
ings, it is difficult to conceptualize parenting style as a quality of
parents that is unaffected by the adolescent. It seems that what is
needed is a systematic questioning of the unidirectional assump-
tion behind the parenting-style paradigm.
The Present Study
In the present study, we used data from a large, longitudinal
project to revisit the unidirectional assumption in the parenting-
style conceptualization and the role that knowledge might have
played in the most influential findings.
First, we examined our claim that including knowledge items in
the measure of behavioral control built in relations between par-
enting and adjustment. To do so, we created a measure that directly
paralleled the behavioral control measure (i.e., strictness-
supervision) used in many of the most highly cited studies and
described in Lamborn et al. (1991). We looked at whether the
measure was more highly correlated with adolescent adjustment
than the same strictness-supervision measure without the knowl-
edge items. Our prediction was that the measure including knowl-
edge would be more highly correlated with all the adjustment
measures than the measure without knowledge items.
Then, we examined bidirectional relations between parenting
style and adolescent behavior. In these analyses, our measure of
behavioral control did not contain any knowledge items. Apart
from this, we made every attempt to simulate the main features of
the designs and analyses used in the most highly cited parenting-
style studies (i.e., Gray & Steinberg, 1999; Lamborn et al., 1991;
Steinberg, Dornbusch, & Brown, 1992; Steinberg et al., 1994;
Steinberg, Lamborn, et al., 1992). We adopted the two approaches
that were used in the most highly cited studies: one simulating
Maccoby and Martin’s (1983) four parenting styles (see Glasgow
et al., 1997; Lamborn et al., 1991; Steinberg et al., 1994) and one
focusing on authoritativeness (see Gray & Steinberg, 1999; Stein-
berg, Lamborn, et al., 1992; Steinberg et al., 1991). We looked at
parenting and youth adjustment at two points in time to examine
bidirectional effects. Previous studies related parenting style to a
range of adjustment measures, including school orientation, self-
esteem, depressive symptoms, delinquency, and substance use
(see, e.g., Fletcher et al., 1995). We used similar measures. In
addition, we included measures of youth disclosure and secrecy,
because several recent studies have looked to individual parenting-
style dimensions as explanations for disclosure (e.g., Soenens,
Vansteenkiste, Luyckx, & Goossens, 2006), and other studies have
argued for distinguishing disclosure from secrecy (Engels, Finke-
nauer, & van Kooten, 2006; Finkenauer, Engels, & Meeus, 2002;
Smetana, Metzger, Gettman, & Campione-Barr, 2006). For each of
the two approaches to parenting style, we asked (a) cross-
sectionally, does parenting style relate to adolescent adjustment
and (b) longitudinally, what are the directions of effects? Although
few gender differences in the links between parenting and adjust-
ment have been found in the studies we have referred to,
adolescent-to-parent links were not examined. Thus, in this study
we included tests of gender differences for the longitudinal effects.
Method
Participants and Procedure
Participants were part of a cohort-sequential study, in which
youths in one Swedish community were assessed yearly over 5
years. Each year, all youths in Grades 4 through 12 (roughly, ages
10 –18) were targeted. The community was similar to the country
as a whole on variables such as unemployment, income, parental
education, and immigrant status.
The analytic sample for this study comprised seventh and eighth
graders followed over 2 years. To maximize the sample size for the
analyses, we constructed a data set composed of youths who were
in grades 7 and 8 (ages 13 and 14) in 2001 or 2003 (hereafter
referred to as Time 1) followed over 2 years to 2003 or 2005
(hereafter referred to as Time 2). According to the school registers,
1,425 students were registered at Time 1. We had complete data on
the parenting-style measures for 1,247 (88%; 636 boys, 611 girls)
at Time 1 and 978 (78%; 495 boys, 483 girls) at Time 2. The
average age at Time 1 was 13.7 years, and 91% were either 13 or
14 years old. Ninety-one percent of the adolescents were born in
Sweden, as were 80% of their mothers and 81% of their fathers.
Thirty-two percent had parents who were divorced or separated.
According to parents’ reports, 58% of mothers and 92% of fathers
were employed full time, and 17% of mothers and 28% of fathers
had university educations. Attrition was largely due to youths’
choosing high school programs that were not available in the
community and transferring to schools in nearby communities.
This attrition should not have biased the longitudinal sample.
Adolescents were recruited in their classrooms during school
hours. They were told about the kinds of questions included and
how long it would take to fill out the questionnaire. They were
informed that participation was voluntary and that, if they chose
not to participate, they would be free to do school work. They were
assured that if they participated, their answers would not be re-
vealed to their parents, teachers, or anyone else. Parents were
informed about the study in advance in meetings held in the
community and by mail and told that they could withdraw their
youth from the study at any time. About 1% sent in a postage-paid
postcard to keep their youth from participating. Adolescents filled
out the questionnaires during regular school hours in sessions
administered by trained research assistants. Teachers were not
present. Adolescents were not paid for their participation, but all
youths in the classrooms, regardless of participation, were entered
in drawings for movie tickets. The study and all procedures were
approved by the University Ethics Review Board.
 REVISITING PARENTING STYLE
Attrition
Using logistic regression analysis, participants who took part at
both time points (n ⫽ 978) were compared with those who took
part only at Time 1 (n ⫽ 269) on all measures used in the study at
Time 1. Only one significant difference was found. Participants
who dropped out reported more alcohol intoxication at Time 1
(B ⫽ ⫺.26, p ⫽ .001). The Nagelkerke R2 for a model involving
the intoxication measure was .059, indicating a minimal differ-
ence.
Measures
Parenting style. For the operationalization of parenting style,
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we focused on the core features of the parenting-style dimen-
sions—warmth, behavioral control, and psychological autonomy
support. Like in the studies to which we were comparing, all
measures were adolescent reported.
Parental warmth. A six-item measure of parental warmth
was used, which was created for a previous project and for which
concurrent and predictive validity have been reported (Tilton-
Weaver et al., 2010). This measure concerned parents’ expressions
of emotional warmth and acceptance (e.g., “Show they care for
you with words and gestures” and “Does small things that make
you feel special [e.g., wink, smile]”). For this measure, reports
were made for mothers and fathers separately. They were substan-
tially correlated, r(864) ⫽ .68, p ⬍ .01, and were aggregated if
both were available. Cronbach’s alphas were .82 and .88 at Times
1 and 2, respectively.
Parental behavioral control. The measure of behavioral con-
trol reported by Kerr and Stattin (2000) was used. Youths an-
swered five questions about parents’ monitoring and control of
their behavior away from home (e.g., “Do you need to have your
parents’ permission to stay out late on a weekday evening” ; “Do
you need to ask your parents before you can decide with your
friends what you will do on a Saturday evening”; and “If you have
been out very late one night, do your parents require that you
explain what you did and whom you were with”). The alpha
reliabilities were .78 and .85 at Times 1 and 2, respectively.
Psychological autonomy support. For the present measure of
psychological autonomy support, a measure of democratic deci-
sion making in the family was used, which was created within the
present project and has been reported previously (Stattin et al.,
2011). The focus was on parents’ support of autonomous thinking
during decision making to avoid a problem that has been identified
with earlier, broader measures, specifically, the inclusion of items
that tapped psychological control rather than autonomy support
(see Silk, Morris, Kanaya, & Steinberg, 2003). Youths responded
to six statements about their experiences of having their opinions
respected and supported during family discussions (e.g., “Your
parents ask you when decisions are made in the family”; “You
think you have an influence on and take part in what is happening
in your family”; and “When you are discussing at home, you
usually get to finish what you have to say”). The alpha reliabilities
were .87 and .91 at Times 1 and 2, respectively.
Adolescent adjustment. Adolescent adjustment measures
were selected to be similar to those used in the most highly cited
studies (see Fletcher et al., 1995). They were organized into
conceptual categories similar to those used in previous studies.
1543
School problems. Self-reported school maladjustment was
used as the indicator of school problems. It was measured with a
scale previously reported by Kerr and Stattin (2000). Youths
answered five questions about school (e.g, ”Do you enjoy
school?”; “Do you try to do the best you can in school?”; “Do you
feel you are forced to be at school against your will?”). The alpha
reliability was .77 at both Times 1 and 2.
Externalizing problems. Measures of externalizing problems
used in the study included delinquency, loitering, and frequency of
intoxication.
Delinquency. This measure was made up of three scales:
Normbreaking activities with the best friend, Normbreaking activ-
ities with the free-time peer group, and Self-reported delinquency.
The first two measures were created within this project and have
been reported previously (Kerr, Stattin, & Kiesner, 2007; Muñoz,
Kerr, & Besic, 2008). Youths named their three best friends and
those in their free-time peer groups (up to 10 names). For the first
mentioned best friend and the free-time peer group, they were
asked how often they had done each of five normbreaking activ-
ities with that person or group during the last year (e.g., skipped
class, shoplifted). The alpha reliabilities for Normbreaking with
the best friend were .68 and .72 for Times 1 and 2, respectively.
For Normbreaking with the free-time peer group, they were .73
and .74 for Times 1 and 2, respectively. Self-reported delinquency
was measured with 19 questions about delinquent activities that
are commonly included in self-report measures (see, e.g., Haynie,
2001). This scale has been validated in a European sample in a
comparison with official records (Magnusson, Dunér, & Zetter-
blom, 1975), and similar scales have been validated in North
American samples (Hindelang, Hirschi, & Weis, 1980). The alpha
reliabilities were .90 and .93 for Times 1 and 2, respectively. These
three measures of delinquency were substantially related. The
correlations ranged from .67 to .78 at Time 1 and from .54 to .80
at Time 2. An aggregate delinquency score was constructed by
averaging the standardized scores on the three measures.
Loitering on the streets was assessed with a single item that was
created for a prior project and has been used previously (Ander-
shed, Stattin, & Kerr, 2001; Persson, Kerr, & Stattin, 2007): “How
often do you usually hang out in town in the evening without doing
anything in particular?” Answers were given on a 5-point scale
ranging from 1 (Seldom or never) to 5 (Almost every night). The
2-year stability was .26.
Intoxication frequency. Adolescents reported how often they
had been intoxicated during the past year with an item that was
originally part of the delinquency scale used in this study (Mag-
nusson et al., 1975), but has been used separately in prior studies
(e.g., Koutakis, Stattin, & Kerr, 2008). For this study, the item was
not included in the delinquency measure. The question was: “Have
you, during the last year, drunk so much beer, liquor, or wine that
you got drunk?” The response options ranged from 1 (No, it has
not happened) to 5 (More than 10 times). The 2-year stability was
.42.
Internalizing problems. Measures of internalizing problems
included low self-esteem and depressive symptoms.
Low self-esteem. To measure low self-esteem, reversed scores
from the Rosenberg Self-Esteem scale (Rosenberg, 1979) were
used, which included questions such as “For the most part, are you
satisfied with yourself?” and ”Sometimes, do you think that you
 1544 KERR, STATTIN, AND ÖZDEMIR

are no use to anyone?” The alpha reliability was .89 at both Times
1 and 2.
Depressed mood. To measure depressed mood, the Child
Depression Scale from the Centers for Epidemiological Studies
(Radloff, 1977) was used. Adolescents answered 20 questions
about their mood during the last week (e.g., “During the last week
I have: been bothered by things I am usually not bothered by; felt
that I am not as good as everybody else”). The alpha reliability was
.91 at both Times 1 and 2.
Information management. The measure of adolescent infor-
mation management was the five-item Youth Disclosure scale
reported by Kerr and Stattin (2000). The original scale included
reversed items (secrecy), which some have argued are conceptu-
ally different from disclosure (Engels et al., 2006; Finkenauer et
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This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
sures are shown side by side in Table 1. As shown in the table,
both measures comprised four questions about parental knowledge
of the youth’s daily activities, three questions about how much
parents try to find out about the youth’s activities, and two ques-
tions concerning rules about going out on weekday and weekend
evenings. Our knowledge items were taken from Kerr and Stattin
(2000); questions about trying to find out were adapted from
Lamborn et al. (1991); and the remaining two questions were from
the behavioral control measure used in the present study. The alpha
reliability for this measure was .78 at both Times 1 and 2, which
is comparable to the .76 reported by Lamborn et al. (1991).
Creation of Parenting Styles and Authoritativeness

al., 2002; Smetana et al., 2006). Thus, in line with recent studies
(see Tilton-Weaver et al., 2010), the measure was separated into
two scales.
Disclosure. Three items measured disclosure (e.g., “Do you
talk at home about how you are doing in the different subjects in
school” and “If you are out at night, when you get home, do you
tell what you have done that evening”). The alpha reliabilities for
this three-item scale were .72 and .67 at Times 1 and 2, respec-
tively.
Secrecy. Two items represented secrecy (i.e., “Do you keep
much of what you do in your free time secret from your parents?”;
“Do you hide a lot from your parents about what you do at night
and on weekends?”). The alpha reliabilities for this two-item scale
were .77 and .79 at Times 1 and 2, respectively.
Strictness-supervision. In some of the analyses, a measure
constructed to parallel, item by item, the strictness-supervision
(i.e., behavioral control) measure used in many of the most highly
cited studies (see Lamborn et al., 1991) was used. The two mea-
Measures
First, to examine whether the scales used to measure parental
warmth, behavioral control, and psychological autonomy support
reflected three separate parenting dimensions, confirmatory factor
analyses were performed to test a three-factor solution. The anal-
yses were evaluated using three goodness-of-fit indices: the com-
parative fit index (CFI; Bentler, 1990), the Tucker-Lewis Index
(TLI; Tucker & Lewis, 1973), and the root-mean-square error of
approximation (RMSEA; Browne & Cudeck, 1993). The three-
factor solution provided very good fit for both the Time 1, ␹2(116,
N ⫽ 1247) ⫽ 258.61, p ⬍ .001, CFI ⫽ .98, TLI ⫽ .98, RMSEA ⫽
.01, and Time 2 measures, ␹2(116, N ⫽ 978) ⫽ 313.76, p ⬍ .001,
CFI ⫽ .98, TLI ⫽ .97, RMSEA ⫽ .04. The three-factor solutions
were superior to the one-, two-, and four-factor solutions. It was
concluded that parental warmth, parental behavioral control, and
psychological autonomy support could be treated as three separate,
internally consistent dimensions of parenting.

Table 1
Strictness/Supervision Measures From Lamborn et al. (1991) and the Present Study

Measure Lamborn et al. (1991) Present study

Knowledge (4 items)
Trying to know (3 items)
Rules about going out weekday and
weekend evenings (2 items)
How much do your parents REALLY know . . .
• Where you go at night?
• What you do with your free time?
• Where you are most afternoons after school?
My parents know exactly where I am most
afternoons after school.
How much do your parents TRY to know . . .
• Where you go at night?
• What you do with your free time?
• Where you are most afternoons after school?
In a typical week, what is the latest you can stay
out on SCHOOL NIGHTS (Monday–
Thursday)?
In a typical week, what is the latest you can stay
out on FRIDAY OR SATURDAY NIGHT?
In the last month, have your parents ever had no
idea where you were at night? (reverse scored)
Do your parents know what you do during your
free time?
Do your parents know which friends you hang
out with during your free time?
Do your parents usually know where you go and
what you do after school?
How much do your parents TRY to find out
about the following things. . . .
• Where you go when you are out with friends
at night?
• What you do in your free time?
• Where you hang out and what you do in the
afternoon directly after school?
Do you need to have your parents’ permission
to stay out late on a weekday evening?
If you go out on a Saturday night, do you have
to inform your parents in advance about
whom you will be with and what you will be
doing?
 REVISITING PARENTING STYLE 1545

Parenting styles. Our construction of the parenting-style Results

categories was based on the procedure used by Lamborn and
colleagues (Lamborn et al., 1991). Following the original proce-
dure, only two dimensions—warmth and behavioral control—
were used for these categories. Some modifications from the
original procedure were required, however, to allow for analyzing
changes between the categories over time. In the original proce-
dure, tertile cutoffs were used, and only families scoring in the
upper and lower tertiles were included in the creation of parenting-
style groups. In effect, only about two thirds of the original sample
was used in the analyses. In the present case, however, one of the
goals was to detect changes over time in parenting, and to do so,
we needed to keep all parents in the analyses. Hence, median splits
were used so that parents who changed over time would not be
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Do Knowledge Items Artificially Elevate Relations
Between Parental Behavioral Control and Adolescent
Adjustment?
To answer this question, we looked at correlations with adjust-
ment for measures created to parallel Lamborn et al.’s (1991)
strictness-supervision measure, with knowledge items (as it was in
the original) and without. We compared the correlations by using
Steiger’s (1980) formula for dependent correlations. Note that
these two strictness-supervision measures were highly correlated
with each other at both time points (rs ⫽ .86 and .85 at Times 1

and 2, respectively). Nonetheless, as shown in Table 2, the corre-

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eliminated when the Time 2 categories were created. Thus, at each
time point, four groups were created: authoritative (above the
median on both dimensions, 22.7% and 20.8% at Times 1 and 2,
respectively), authoritarian (above the median on behavioral con-
trol and below on warmth, 22.2% and 19.6% at Times 1 and 2,
respectively), permissive (above the median on warmth and below
on behavioral control, 23% and 33.2% at Times 1 and 2, respec-
tively), and neglectful (below the median on both dimensions,
32.1% and 26.4% at Times 1 and 2, respectively).
Authoritativeness. Our construction of the authoritativeness
measure followed the procedure used by Steinberg and colleagues
(Steinberg, Lamborn, et al., 1992). For this measure, all three
scales—Warmth, Behavioral Control, and Psychological Auton-
omy Support—were divided at the median. Then, a four-level
variable was created that represented the number of scales on
which families were high, meaning above the median. Authorita-
tive parents (coded 4) were high on all three dimensions; Some-
what authoritative parents (coded 3) were high on two dimensions;
Somewhat nonauthoritative parents (coded 2) were high on one
dimension; and Nonauthoritative parents (coded 1) were not high
on any of the three dimensions. These groups represented 15.1%,
26.8%, 31.8%, and 26.3% of the sample at Time 1 and 12.4%,
33.7%, 32.0%, and 21.9% of the sample at Time 2.
lations with adjustment were consistently higher for the strictness-
supervision measure with knowledge items than for the one with-
out, and for virtually all adjustment measures the differences were
highly significant. Because the only difference between the two
sets of correlations was the inclusion of knowledge items in one
measure but not the other, these results suggest that the links
between behavioral control (termed strictness-supervision) and
adjustment in many of the most highly cited parenting-style studies
were stronger than they would have been if the measure had
focused only on parental behavior.
Do Parenting Styles and Authoritativeness Relate to
Youth Adjustment Cross-Sectionally, and What are
the Directions of Effects Longitudinally?
We followed as closely as possible the basic analyses connect-
ing parenting styles or authoritativeness with adolescent adjust-
ment in the most cited work on parenting style (e.g., Glasgow et
al., 1997; Lamborn et al., 1991; Steinberg et al., 1994; Steinberg,
Lamborn, et al., 1992). We supplemented those analyses by using
parenting as an outcome as well as a predictor to examine direc-
tions of effects. Because earlier work showed that the links be-
tween parenting style and adjustment were not moderated by

Table 2
Correlations With Adolescent Adjustment for Measures Paralleling Lamborn et al.’s (1991) Strictness-Supervision With and Without
Knowledge Items

Strictness-supervision Time 1 (n ⫽ 662) Strictness-supervision Time 2 (n ⫽ 531)

Measure With knowledge Without knowledge z-test With knowledge Without knowledge z-test

School problems
School maladjustment ⫺.42ⴱⴱⴱ ⫺.26ⴱⴱⴱ ⫺8.74ⴱⴱⴱ ⫺.36ⴱⴱⴱ ⫺.23ⴱⴱⴱ ⫺6.03ⴱⴱⴱ
Externalizing problems
Delinquency ⫺.41ⴱⴱⴱ ⫺.19ⴱⴱⴱ ⫺11.83ⴱⴱⴱ ⫺.41ⴱⴱⴱ ⫺.22ⴱⴱⴱ ⫺9.53ⴱⴱⴱ
Loitering ⫺.36ⴱⴱⴱ ⫺.25ⴱⴱⴱ ⫺7.90ⴱⴱⴱ ⫺.34ⴱⴱⴱ ⫺.22ⴱⴱⴱ ⫺5.54ⴱⴱⴱ
Intoxication frequency ⫺.36ⴱⴱⴱ ⫺.18ⴱⴱⴱ ⫺9.76ⴱⴱⴱ ⫺.34ⴱⴱⴱ ⫺.23ⴱⴱⴱ ⫺5.03ⴱⴱⴱ
Internalizing problems
Poor self-esteem ⫺.24ⴱⴱⴱ ⫺.15ⴱⴱⴱ ⫺4.71ⴱⴱⴱ ⫺.17ⴱⴱⴱ ⫺.06 ⫺4.78ⴱⴱⴱ
Depressed mood ⫺.26ⴱⴱⴱ ⫺.10ⴱ ⫺7.95ⴱⴱⴱ ⫺.08 ⫺.02 ⫺2.15ⴱ
Information management
Disclosure ⫺.55ⴱⴱⴱ ⫺.38ⴱⴱⴱ ⫺9.89ⴱⴱⴱ ⫺.48ⴱⴱⴱ ⫺.34ⴱⴱⴱ ⫺6.71ⴱⴱⴱ
Secrecy ⫺.39ⴱⴱⴱ ⫺.21ⴱⴱⴱ ⫺9.32ⴱⴱⴱ ⫺.37ⴱⴱⴱ ⫺.14ⴱⴱⴱ ⫺10.98ⴱⴱⴱ

Note. Steiger’s (1980) z-test formula was used for comparison of dependent correlation coefficients.
ⴱ
p ⬍ .05. ⴱⴱⴱ p ⬍ .001.
 1546 KERR, STATTIN, AND ÖZDEMIR

socioeconomic status, ethnicity, or family structure (Steinberg et
al., 1991), we did not include these variables in the analyses.
Parenting Styles
Cross-sectional differences in adjustment associated with
authoritative, authoritarian, permissive, and neglectful par-
enting. We asked, first, whether cross-sectional differences
reported in earlier studies would be replicated in this study using
a measure of parental behavioral control that did not include
parental knowledge. Using analyses of variance (ANOVAs), we
examined whether differences in parenting styles were associated
cross-sectionally with differences in youth adjustment. As shown
in Table 3, the answer was yes. At both times, all models were
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and neglectful styles, because they have shown robust longitudinal
links to adjustment in the studies to which we have referred. To
include parenting styles as both predictors and outcomes in these
cross-lagged models, we created orthogonal contrast codes repre-
senting the authoritative and neglectful styles (Cohen, 1968). One
contrasted authoritative families (coded 3) with all others (coded
⫺1); the second contrasted neglectful families (coded 3) with all
others (coded ⫺1). We did this contrast coding for Times 1 and 2
separately. Thus, used as predictors, these contrast codes showed
the predictive effects of having authoritative or neglectful parents
rather than another style, and used as outcomes, they showed the
predictive effects of youth adjustment for changes into or out of
the authoritative or neglectful style.

highly significant, and post hoc tests confirmed that youths with In the model fitting approach, three models were tested for each
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authoritative parents were significantly better adjusted on all mea-
sures than those with neglectful parents. Similar to past research,
we found less consistent results for the permissive and authoritar-
ian styles. Thus, on these basic characteristics, our data were
consistent with others reported in the literature.
Longitudinal reciprocal relations. Do parenting styles pre-
dict changes in youth adjustment, does youth adjustment predict
changes in parenting styles, or both? To answer these questions,
we used a model fitting approach (Finkel, 1995) and Mplus 6.0
(Muthén & Muthén, 1998 –2010). We focused on the authoritative
adjustment measure. First, we tested models containing the cross-
paths from parenting (authoritative and neglectful) to youth ad-
justment against the baseline model, which included only stability
paths and within-time correlations. In these models, the cross-
lagged paths from adjustment to parenting were fixed to zero, so
significant improvements in model fit over the baseline model
would suggest that the parent-to-youth cross-paths significantly
explained the changes over time. Nonsignificant changes in model
fit would suggest that the estimated cross-lagged paths did not
significantly predict the changes in the outcome. We then used a

Table 3
Mean Adjustment (Z-Scores) at Times 1 and 2 for Adolescents With Neglectful, Authoritarian, Permissive, and Authoritative Parents

Variable Neglectful Authoritarian Permissive Authoritative F p

Time 1e
Gender .56a .44b .54a .44b 4.92 .002
School problems
School maladjustment .40d ⫺.02c ⫺.17b ⫺.45a 46.54 ⬍.001
Externalizing problems
Delinquency .29c ⫺.14a,b ⫺.03b ⫺.25a 17.66 ⬍.001
Loitering .23c ⫺.09b ⫺.01b ⫺.29a 16.21 ⬍.001
Intoxication frequency .26c ⫺.17a .03b ⫺.26a 17.33 ⬍.001
Internalizing problems
Poor self-esteem .24c .30c ⫺.22b ⫺.40a 36.74 ⬍.001
Depressed mood .15c .16c ⫺.06b ⫺.32a 14.54 ⬍.001
Information management
Disclosure ⫺.48a .01b .03b .65c 81.45 ⬍.001
Secrecy .26c .02b ⫺.11b ⫺.37a 24.29 ⬍.001

Time 2f
a a,b
Gender .56 .46 .52a,b .43b 3.44 .016
School problems
School maladjustment .41 c
.16b
⫺.22 a
⫺.37 a
32.90 ⬍.001
Externalizing problems
Delinquency .17c .03b,c ⫺.06b ⫺.24a 7.07 ⬍.001
Loitering .13c .06b,c ⫺.09a,b ⫺.16a 4.42 .004
Intoxication frequency .22c ⫺.07b,c .07b ⫺.32a 11.99 ⬍.001
Internalizing problems
Poor self-esteem .26b .44c ⫺.27a ⫺.25a 31.93 ⬍.001
Depressed mood .12b .31c ⫺.16a ⫺.11a 10.73 ⬍.001
Information management
Disclosure ⫺.53a ⫺.05b .09b .59c 56.17 ⬍.001
Secrecy .20b .24b ⫺.22a ⫺.18a 14.82 ⬍.001

Note. Superscripts indicate significant differences and should be compared within rows. Means with different superscripts differ significantly on post hoc
analyses with Student Newman-Kuel. Gender was coded 0 ⫽ females, 1 ⫽ males.
e
dfs ⫽ 3, 1243. f dfs ⫽ 3, 974.
 REVISITING PARENTING STYLE 1547

similar procedure to test the cross-paths from youth adjustment to
parenting, thus testing the adequacy of youth-effects models. Fi-
nally, we tested all cross-paths simultaneously to determine the
magnitudes of the cross-lagged slopes. We tested differences in the
cross-lagged paths by adding equality constraints. Significant de-
creases in model fit suggested that the parent and youth effects
differed significantly from each other. The advantages of this
model fitting approach over simply focusing on significant cross-
lagged slopes were that we were able to test the parent- and
youth-effects models and determine whether the cross-lagged
slopes indicating parent and youth effects in the final model
differed significantly from each other.
Several additional details of the modeling procedure should be
mentioned. These models included both dichotomous and interval
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improved the model fit over the baseline model, meaning that a
parent-effects model was supported. In contrast, as shown in the
remaining columns, there was only one adjustment measure—
depressed mood—for which the youth-to-parent cross-paths did
not significantly improve model fit over the baseline model, mean-
ing that youth-effects models were supported for every adjustment
measure except depressed mood. Table 5 displays the path coef-
ficients from the final models with all cross-lagged slopes in-
cluded. The first two data columns show parenting styles predict-
ing changes in adolescent adjustment (parent-effects slopes), and
the second two show adolescent adjustment predicting changes in
parenting (youth-effects slopes). The last two columns indicate
whether the parent- and youth-effects slopes differed significantly
from each other. Concerning parenting styles as the predictors of

measures; therefore, we used the weighted least squares with mean changes in youth adjustment, the neglectful style predicted in-
and variance (WLSMV) adjustment estimator. We used chi-square creased delinquency and intoxication in youths, but these slopes
difference tests to compare model fits of parent- and youth-effects did not differ significantly from the nonsignificant youth-effects
models against the baseline model following the procedure sug- slopes for neglectful parenting in these models. Thus, there is no
gested by Muthén and Muthén (1998 –2010) for the WLSMV statistically reliable evidence for neglectful or authoritative par-
estimator. We evaluated all structural models using three enting styles as predictors of changes in youth adjustment. Con-
goodness-of-fit indices—the comparative fit index (CFI; Bentler, cerning youth adjustment as the predictor, school maladjustment,
1990), the root-mean-square error of approximation (RMSEA; poor self-esteem, low disclosure, and secrecy predicted move-
Browne & Cudeck, 1993), and the Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI; ments into the neglectful style, and secrecy and all of the youth
Tucker & Lewis, 1973)—following Hu and Bentler’s (1999) rec- adjustment problems except depressive symptoms predicted move-
ommendations. We used the full information maximum likelihood ments out of the authoritative style. Youth disclosure predicted
procedure to estimate the models with missing data. This proce- movements out of the neglectful style and into the authoritative
dure provides more reliable standard errors than mean imputation, style. All of these youth-effects slopes differed significantly from
listwise deletion, or pairwise deletion (Little & Rubin, 2002; the parent-effects slopes in the models. Thus, for all but one of the
Schafer & Graham, 2002). The proportion of missing values can adjustment measures, there is statistically reliable evidence for
be calculated with a covariance “coverage” matrix. In this study, youth behaviors as predictors of changes in parenting styles. In
the coverage in the models ranged from .95 to .99. summary, the answer to our initial question (i.e., Do parenting
The results are shown in Tables 4 and 5. In Table 4 are the styles predict changes in youth adjustment, does youth adjustment
results of the model comparisons. As shown in the first two predict changes in parenting styles, or both?) seems to be that
columns, there was only one adjustment measure—intoxication youth adjustment predicts changes in parenting styles.
frequency—for which the parent-to-youth cross-paths significantly We tested for gender differences in the cross-lagged slopes by
fitting multiple-group models with equality constraints on the
cross-lagged paths across gender. None of the parent effects on
Table 4 youth adjustment were statistically different across gender. Of all
Chi-Square Difference Tests for Comparisons of Parent- and the adjustment measures, the only gender difference was for de-
Youth-Effects Models for Parenting Styles Against the Baseline linquency, and the differences were confined to the youth-effects
Model paths. Delinquency significantly predicted movements into the
neglectful style for girls but not for boys (␤ ⫽ .42, p ⬍ .001; (␤ ⫽
Parent effecta Youth effectb .08, p ⬎ .05, for girls and boys, respectively). For both girls and
Adjustment measures ⌬␹2(2) p ⌬␹2(2) p boys, delinquency predicted movements out of the authoritative
style, but the path was significantly stronger for girls than for boys
School problems (␤ ⫽ ⫺.65, p ⬍ .001; ␤ ⫽ ⫺.30, p ⬍ .05, for girls and boys,
School maladjustment 1.99 .371 59.42 ⬍.001 respectively). These gender differences are inconclusive, however,
Externalizing problems
Delinquency 4.73 .094 22.90 ⬍.001
given that we identified significant gender differences in only one
Loitering 4.07 .131 14.62 ⬍.001 model out of eight multiple-group comparisons.
Intoxication frequency 13.30 ⬍.001 26.52 ⬍.001
Internalizing problems
Poor self-esteem 4.32 .115 24.81 ⬍.001 Authoritativeness
Depressed mood 0.99 .609 3.83 .147
Information management Cross-sectional relations between authoritativeness and ad-
Disclosure 4.60 .100 63.03 ⬍.001 olescent adjustment. To examine cross-sectional differences on
Secrecy 4.65 .098 31.34 ⬍.001 adjustment between the four authoritativeness groups, we followed
a procedure used by Steinberg and colleagues (Steinberg, Lam-
Note. N for all analyses was 978.
a
Models with cross-paths from authoritative and neglectful parental styles
born, et al., 1992). We calculated the means and standard devia-
to youth adjustment. b Models with cross-paths from youth adjustment to tions of the four authoritativeness groups, and for each group, we
authoritative and neglectful parental styles. calculated the effect size (Cohen’s d) associated with being in that
 1548 KERR, STATTIN, AND ÖZDEMIR

Table 5
Standardized Path Coefficients From Cross-Lagged Models Testing Directional Relations Between Parenting Styles and
Adolescent Adjustment

Parenting styles as predictors Youth adjustment as predictor Differencesa

Adjustment measures Neglectful Authoritative Neglectful Authoritative Neglectfulb Authoritativec

School problems
School maladjustment .03 ⫺.01 .17ⴱⴱⴱ ⫺.32ⴱⴱⴱ x x
Externalizing problems
ⴱ ⴱⴱⴱ
Delinquency .09 ⫺.01 .09 ⫺.44 x
Loitering .00 .05 .07 ⫺.17ⴱⴱⴱ x
Intoxication frequency .08ⴱ ⫺.06 .04 ⫺.39ⴱⴱⴱ x
Internalizing problems
Poor self-esteem .01 .02 .28ⴱⴱⴱ ⫺.25ⴱⴱⴱ x x
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Depressed mood ⫺.01 .00 .09 ⫺.09

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Information management
Disclosure ⫺.05 .05 ⫺.22ⴱⴱⴱ .30ⴱⴱⴱ x x
Secrecy .03 ⫺.05 .16ⴱⴱⴱ ⫺.17ⴱⴱⴱ x x

Note. The magnitudes of the path coefficients were compared by adding equality constraints to the paths followed by a chi-square difference test of model
fit.
a
x means that the magnitude of the standardized path coefficients are significantly different from each other. b Comparisons of path coefficients for
neglectful parenting. c Comparisons of path coefficients for authoritative parenting.
ⴱ
p ⬍ .05. ⴱⴱⴱ p ⬍ .001.

group rather than in the next less authoritative group. The adjust-
ment levels of the four authoritativeness groups are shown in Table
6. In the table, the effect size (d) for each group contrasts that
group with the next least authoritative group. For the nonauthori-
tative group, the comparison is with the authoritative group. The
mean differences were in the expected directions, with more au-
thoritativeness corresponding to better adjustment. The effect sizes
were generally low to moderate, however, except for the difference
between the nonauthoritative and authoritative groups. The effect
sizes were larger for school maladjustment, which was similar to
the measures used in the original study (Steinberg, Lamborn, et al.,
1992), and for poor self-esteem and information management.
Longitudinal reciprocal relations. To examine the direc-
tional relations between parental authoritativeness and youth
adjustment, we used the model-testing procedure described
above. Recall that the authoritativeness categories were made
up of three parenting-style dimensions—warmth, behavioral
control, and psychological autonomy support. As a result, the
Somewhat nonauthoritative and Somewhat authoritative cate-
gories were heterogeneous, because they were high on one or
two dimensions, respectively, but it did not matter which ones.
Because of this, we did not use authoritativeness as a continu-
ous variable, but instead focused on the most and least author-
itative groups, both of which were clearly interpretable because
they were either high or low on all three dimensions. We used
orthogonal contrast codes representing the most and least au-
thoritative groups (Cohen, 1968). One contrasted the most
authoritative parents (coded 3) with all others (coded ⫺1); the
second contrasted the least authoritative parents (coded 3) with
all others (coded ⫺1). We did this for Times 1 and 2 separately.
Used as predictors, these contrast codes showed the predictive
effects of high and low levels of authoritativeness, and used as
outcomes, they showed the predictive effects of youth adjust-
ment for changes in high or low authoritativeness. We used the
model-fitting procedure described above, first testing parent-
and youth-effects models against the baseline model and then
fitting a model with all cross-lagged paths. In the final model,
we tested for significant differences in the directional paths by
adding equality constraints to the cross-lagged paths and testing
the differences in chi-square model fits.
The comparisons of the parent- and youth-effects models
against the baseline model are shown in Table 7, and the
cross-lagged slopes from the final cross-lagged models appear
in Table 8, along with tests of the differences in cross-lagged
paths. As shown in Table 7, none of the parent-effects models
fit the data significantly better than the baseline model, though
the model for intoxication frequency was marginally significant
( p ⫽ .058). In contrast, however, all of the youth-effects models
were significantly better than the baseline model. Furthermore,
as revealed in Table 8, there were no significant cross-paths
from authoritativeness to youth adjustment in the final cross-
lagged models containing all the cross-lagged paths. In all of
the models, however, poor youth adjustment predicted move-
ments away from the most authoritative category, and all of
these were significantly stronger than the corresponding (non-
significant) paths from high authoritativeness to adjustment.
Similarly, in all but two of the models, poor adjustment pre-
dicted movements toward and good adjustment predicted move-
ments away from the least authoritative category. All but one of
these paths were significantly stronger than the corresponding
(nonsignificant) paths from low authoritativeness to youth ad-
justment. Thus, it seems that when parenting style is defined by
all three dimensions considered relevant to parenting adoles-
cents, adolescent adjustment predicts changes in parenting style
more than parenting style predicts changes in adjustment.
We tested for gender differences in the cross-lagged paths in
the final model using the same method as above. Differences
emerged for school maladjustment and delinquency, but only
for the paths in which youth adjustment predicted changes in
authoritativeness. For boys but not girls, both school malad-
 REVISITING PARENTING STYLE 1549

Table 6
Contrasts on Adolescent Adjustment Between Parents With Different Levels of Authoritativeness

Somewhat
Authoritative Somewhat authoritative nonauthoritative Nonauthoritative

Variable M SD da M SD db M SD dc M SD dd

Time 1
Gender 0.38 0.48 0.33 0.54 0.50 0.08 0.50 0.50 0.12 0.56 0.49 0.37
School problems
School maladjustment ⫺0.63 0.73 0.47 ⫺0.23 0.96 0.32 0.07 0.93 0.46 0.51 0.98 1.33
Externalizing problems
Delinquency ⫺0.34 0.67 0.22 ⫺0.18 0.78 0.25 0.05 1.04 0.24 0.32 1.20 0.71
Loitering ⫺0.33 0.76 0.21 ⫺0.16 0.88 0.22 0.05 1.02 0.23 0.30 1.12 0.67
Intoxication frequency ⫺0.30 0.66 0.25 ⫺0.10 0.92 0.07 ⫺0.03 0.96 0.31 0.31 1.20 0.66
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Internalizing problems
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Poor self-esteem ⫺0.56 0.88 0.33 ⫺0.25 1.01 0.44 0.18 0.95 0.23 0.39 0.90 1.07
Depressed mood ⫺0.41 0.84 0.33 ⫺0.11 1.00 0.22 0.11 0.98 0.12 0.23 1.02 0.69
Information management
Disclosure 0.83 0.72 0.69 0.27 0.90 0.45 ⫺0.14 0.93 0.48 ⫺0.58 0.91 1.73
Secrecy ⫺0.54 0.87 0.36 ⫺0.21 0.97 0.38 0.16 0.99 0.18 0.33 0.94 0.96

Time 2
Gender 0.37 0.48 0.18 0.46 0.50 0.14 0.53 0.50 0.16 0.61 0.49 0.49
School problems
School maladjustment ⫺0.57 0.91 0.37 ⫺0.23 0.92 0.40 0.14 0.92 0.36 0.49 1.00 1.11
Externalizing problems
Delinquency ⫺0.29 0.82 0.13 ⫺0.18 0.82 0.29 0.10 1.10 0.14 0.25 1.06 0.57
Loitering ⫺0.31 0.73 0.25 ⫺0.10 0.93 0.15 0.05 1.01 0.18 0.24 1.14 0.59
Intoxication frequency ⫺0.30 0.92 0.28 ⫺0.04 0.97 0.06 0.02 1.01 0.15 0.17 1.03 0.48
Internalizing problems
Poor self-esteem ⫺0.48 0.82 0.29 ⫺0.22 0.96 0.48 0.26 1.04 0.06 0.32 0.88 0.94
Depressed mood ⫺0.19 0.98 0.09 ⫺0.11 0.89 0.24 0.12 1.06 0.00 0.12 1.03 0.31
Information management
Disclosure 0.81 0.82 0.66 0.24 0.90 0.43 ⫺0.15 0.91 0.51 ⫺0.62 0.92 1.64
Secrecy ⫺0.45 1.01 0.34 ⫺0.12 0.94 0.29 0.16 1.01 0.07 0.23 0.96 0.69

Note. F tests show that the four groups differ from each other for all measures (p ⬍ .001) at both Time 1 and Time 2.
a
Effect size of contrast between Authoritative and Somewhat authoritative. b Effect size of contrast between Somewhat authoritative and Somewhat
nonauthoritative. c Effect size of contrast between Somewhat nonauthoritative and Nonauthoritative. d Effect size of contrast between Authoritative and
Nonauthoritative.

justment and delinquency predicted parental movements toward
the least authoritative category (␤ ⫽ .29, p ⬍ .001; ␤ ⫽ .12,
p ⬎ .05, for boys and girls, respectively, on school maladjust-
ment and ␤ ⫽ .12, p ⬍ .001; ␤ ⫽ .05, p ⬎ .05, for boys and
girls, respectively, on delinquency). Similarly, for boys but not
girls, delinquency predicted movements away from the most
authoritative category (␤ ⫽ ⫺.28, p ⬍ .001; ␤ ⫽ ⫺.01, p ⬎ .05,
for boys and girls, respectively). No other gender differences
emerged in these models. Again, however, these tests are in-
conclusive given that gender differences emerged in only two
models out of eight multiple-group comparisons, and they were
inconsistent with the gender differences found for the analyses
involving the authoritative and neglectful styles.
Discussion
We asked two main questions about the most highly cited
studies on parenting style and adolescent adjustment. One was
whether the links between parenting style and adjustment were
strengthened by the inclusion of parental knowledge items in the
measures of parenting style. The other was whether parenting style
seems to affect adolescent adjustment unidirectionally, as main-
tained in the most highly cited theoretical and empirical works
(e.g., Darling & Steinberg, 1993), or whether adolescent behavior
might also spur changes in parenting style, as suggested by other
theoretical models (e.g., Sameroff, 2010). Our results suggested,
first, that including knowledge items in the measures of parental
behavioral control results in stronger links to adolescent adjust-
ment than if only measures focusing on parental behavior are used,
and second, that adolescent behavior does predict changes in
parenting style, and these youth effects are stronger and more
robust than parent effects. These findings have implications for
research on parenting style—past and future.
What are the implications for research on parenting style?
Concerning past research, the present findings suggest caution
about claims of strong unidirectional effects, particularly in using
them as the bases for future study designs. Concerning future
research on parenting style, we see at least two implications. One
is that parenting-style theory might well be broadened to explain
child effects on parenting style as well as reciprocal or transac-
tional effects. Although it should be noted that our findings did not
strongly support the notion of transactional processes, we focused
on one period in development, and the results might have been
 1550 KERR, STATTIN, AND ÖZDEMIR

Table 7 be attenuated in light of this knowledge that parenting is in part a

Chi-Square Difference Tests for Comparisons of Parent- and reaction to adolescent behavior, and future research should focus
Youth-Effects Models for Authoritativeness Against the Baseline on measures that directly tap parental behavior.
Model These findings also have implications for the literature on pa-
rental monitoring. Similar to behavioral control, monitoring has
Parent effectsa Youth effectsb
been conceptualized as parents’ efforts to keep track of their
Variable ⌬␹2(2) p ⌬␹2(2) p adolescents’ activities and associations away from home. In much
of the monitoring literature, however, monitoring has been opera-
School problems tionalized as parental knowledge of adolescents’ daily activities
School maladjustment 1.96 .376 54.95 ⬍.001
Externalizing problems
(Crouter & Head, 2002), often with the knowledge items from
Delinquency 1.77 .420 8.74 .013 Lamborn et al.’s (1991) strictness-supervision scale. These mea-
Loitering 3.20 .202 10.01 .006 sures are still widely used, even though their weak links to parental
Intoxication frequency 5.71 .058 8.20 .017 monitoring behaviors and strong links to adolescents’ willingness
Internalizing problems
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.

to provide information have been shown in a number of studies

Poor self-esteem 1.28 .527 27.30 ⬍.001
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.

Depressed mood 0.64 .725 6.44 .040 (Crouter et al., 2005; Keijsers et al., 2010; Kerr & Stattin, 2000;
Information management Kerr et al., 2010; Marshall et al., 2005; Stattin & Kerr, 2000). The
Disclosure 4.22 .121 53.38 ⬍.001 present results suggest that the use of knowledge measures as an
Secrecy 1.57 .457 30.41 ⬍.001
operationalization of monitoring will result in the links between
Note. N for all analyses was 978. monitoring and adolescent adjustment appearing stronger than if
a
Models with cross-paths from high and low parental authoritativeness to the operationalizations had focused strictly on parental behaviors.
youth adjustment. b Models with cross-paths from youth adjustment to One surprising finding in the present study was in the compar-
high and low parental authoritativeness.
ison of the findings for authoritative parenting in Table 5 with
those for authoritativeness in Table 8. The difference between the
different at a different period. The issue of bidirectionality de- two sets of analyses was how authoritative parenting was defined.
serves study in samples of different ages. Expectations for these In Table 5, it was high levels of warmth and behavioral control,
studies can be informed, in part, by the child-effects literature whereas in Table 8 it was high levels of warmth, behavioral
involving infants and preadolescent children (e.g., Bell & Chap- control, and psychological autonomy support. Most of the findings
man, 1986; Bell, Lewis, & Rosenblum, 1974; Ianna, Hallahan, & are highly similar, but differences are clear in the externalizing
Bell, 1982; Keller & Bell, 1979; Lytton, 1990). Another implica- models. Table 5 shows that all three externalizing measures sub-
tion for future research is that measures of parenting style should stantially predict movements out of the authoritative style defined
focus on parental behavior, avoiding the use of measures such as by warmth and behavioral control, whereas in Table 8, with
parental knowledge, which have been assumed to reflect parental autonomy support added to the definition, the three externalizing
behavior but may involve youth behavior, as well. In short, the measures still significantly predict movements away from author-
strong conclusions about parenting effects from past research must itative parenting, but the strength of the slopes is noticeably lower.

Table 8
Standardized Path Coefficients From Cross-Lagged Models Testing Directions of Effects Between Parental Authoritativeness and
Adolescent Adjustment

Authoritativeness as predictor Youth adjustment as predictor Differencesa

Least Most Least Most

Variable authoritative authoritative authoritative authoritative Leastb Mostc

School problems
School adjustment .02 .02 .21ⴱⴱⴱ ⫺.31ⴱⴱⴱ x x
Externalizing problems
ⴱ ⴱ
Delinquency ⫺.04 ⫺.04 .09 ⫺.10 x
Loitering ⫺.05 ⫺.01 .11ⴱ ⫺.10ⴱ x x
Intoxication frequency .01 ⫺.07 .09 ⫺.13ⴱ x
Internalizing Problems
Poor self-esteem .03 .02 .16ⴱⴱⴱ ⫺.20ⴱⴱⴱ x x
Depressed mood .01 .00 .08 ⫺.11ⴱ x
Information management
Disclosure ⫺.02 .06 ⫺.28ⴱⴱⴱ .26ⴱⴱⴱ x x
Secrecy ⫺.01 ⫺.04 .19ⴱⴱⴱ ⫺.19ⴱⴱⴱ x x

Note. The magnitudes of the path coefficients were compared by adding equality constraints with the paths followed by a chi-square difference test of
model fit.
a
x means that the magnitudes of the standardized path coefficients are significantly different from each other. b Comparisons of path coefficients for the
least authoritative parenting. c Comparisons of path coefficients for the most authoritative parenting.
ⴱ
p ⬍ .05. ⴱⴱⴱ p ⬍ .001.
 REVISITING PARENTING STYLE
Part of the explanation might be that there is a smaller group of
authoritative parents when using the three measures instead of two,
but that is true for all the adjustment measures, for which the
findings are remarkably similar. Thus, it is difficult to escape the
conclusion that parents’ reactions to their adolescents’ externaliz-
ing problems have much to do with warmth and control and little
to do with psychological autonomy support, at least as they are
perceived by the adolescents. This also raises questions about
the respective roles of warmth, control, and autonomy support in
the definition of authoritative parenting.
The present study has limitations that bear mentioning. First, our
measures of parenting style were from adolescent reports. We do
not know how adolescents’ perceptions might compare with par-
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
ents’ reports of their own behavior or observers’ reports. Also,
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
apart from parental warmth, we did not measure mothers’ and
fathers’ parenting behaviors separately. As with all longitudinal
studies, questionnaire space was limited, so our strategy was to
assess parents separately for constructs such as warmth that are
likely to be governed by individual emotional reactions and styles
of interaction and to ask about parents as a unit for constructs such
as behavioral control for which parents are more likely to be acting
out jointly agreed-upon policies. Because this applied to two of the
three parenting measures used in this study, it was necessary to
deal with parents as a unit in these analyses. It should be noted that
both these limitations were also features of all of the highly cited
parenting-style studies that we have referred to in this article.
Thus, even though they limit our ability to fully understand the
phenomenon, they make our results directly comparable to the
literature to which we intended to compare.
Despite its limitations, this study has several strengths. One is
the use of a large community sample that is substantially repre-
sentative of the country from which it comes. This, together with
the high participation rate and the close correspondence between
the current cross-sectional results and those from previous re-
search, argues for the generalizability of the findings. Another
strength of the study is the age range and time covered. We
covered ages 12–15, which are ages when both internalizing and
externalizing problems tend to increase, so they are relevant ages
for the examination of bidirectional effects between parenting and
adolescent problem behavior. Finally, that the effects appeared
over 2 years testifies to their robustness.
Almost 20 years ago, in an overview of the history of
research on the role of parenting in socialization, Eleanor
Maccoby (1992) argued that over time there had been three
“sweeping changes” in thinking, one being a shift from unidi-
rectional to bidirectional models. She wrote, “What began as
top-down conceptions . . . has shifted to a conception of social-
ization as involving mainly bidirectional and interactive pro-
cesses” (Maccoby, 1992, p. 1007). Despite this conceptual
change, however, empirical tests of bidirectional and interactive
processes have been relatively scarce in the literature (see
Pardini, 2008). In the now-growing body of research on these
issues, the overwhelming majority of studies have concluded
either that bidirectional effects prevailed or that youth-to-parent
effects were more evident than parent-to-youth effects. It seems
that the time is ripe to make this the standard way of looking at
parenting in both theory and empirical work.
1551
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adolescents from authoritative, authoritarian, indulgent, and neglectful

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families. Child Development, 65, 754 –770. doi:10.2307/1131416

Steinberg, L., Lamborn, S. D., Dornbusch, S. M., & Darling, N. (1992).
Impact of parenting practices on adolescent achievement: Authoritative Received June 1, 2011
parenting, school involvement, and encouragement to succeed. Child Revision received January 11, 2012
Development, 63, 1266 –1281. doi:10.2307/1131532 Accepted January 19, 2012 䡲

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