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A Daily Examination of the Moderating Role of Adolescents’ Coping in Associations between Psychologically Controlling Parenting and Adolescents’ Maladjustment

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Abstract

To explain why there is substantial heterogeneity in the degree to which adolescents suffer from psychologically controlling parenting, it is important to take into account adolescents’ active contribution to the socialization processes and to their coping with controlling parenting in particular. This study aimed to examine whether adolescents’ coping with controlling parenting (i.e., oppositional defiance, compulsive compliance, negotiation, and accommodation) moderated associations between psychologically controlling parenting, adolescents’ experiences of psychological need frustration, and their internalizing and externalizing problems. A total of 161 adolescents (M age = 15.56 years; SD age = 1.14; 61.5% female) and either their mother or their father participated in 7-day diary study. As expected, accommodation played an adaptive role, thereby buffering within-person (daily) associations between psychologically controlling parenting, adolescents’ need frustration, and subsequent problems. Unexpectedly, compulsive compliance played a similar adaptive role. Overall, the moderating effects of coping were rather limited, suggesting that adolescents’ coping can alter the daily negative consequences associated with psychologically controlling parenting only to a certain extent.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the adolescents and parents who kindly accepted to participate in the study, as well as the students who helped in the data collection.

Funding

This study was supported by the Special Research Fund of Ghent University (Fund number: BOF.24Y.2017.0016.01).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Developmental, Social, and Personality Psychology, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium

    Nele Flamant, Maarten Vansteenkiste, Nele Laporte, Elien Mabbe & Bart Soenens

  2. Department of Movement and Sports Sciences, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium

    Leen Haerens

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  1. Nele Flamant
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Contributions

N.F. conceived of the study, participated in its design and coordination, performed the statistical analysis and coordinated the first draft of the manuscript and its submission; L.H. conceived of the study, participated in the interpretation of the data, and helped up to draft the manuscript; M.V. conceived of the study, participated in its design and coordination and helped up to draft the manuscript; N.L. participated in the design and coordination of the study and helped up to draft the manuscript; E.M. participated in the design and was responsible for coordination of the study and helped up to draft the manuscript; B.S. conceived of the study, participated in its design and coordination, participated in the interpretation of the data, and helped up to draft the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Nele Flamant.

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This study was approved by the university’s Ethical Committee of [anonymized for peer-review] (2019/71). Ethical standards were adhered to in all aspects of the study.

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Flamant, N., Haerens, L., Vansteenkiste, M. et al. A Daily Examination of the Moderating Role of Adolescents’ Coping in Associations between Psychologically Controlling Parenting and Adolescents’ Maladjustment. J Youth Adolescence 52, 287–305 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-022-01685-3

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