Maternal and Paternal Authority Styles and Developmental Outcomes: An Investigation of University Students in Turkey and the United States

Using data from undergraduates in both Turkey and the United States, we examined cultural differences in the perceived parenting authority styles and the links between perceived parenting authority styles, academic achievement, and self-esteem. We also examined the separate contributions of fathers and mothers in each country. A total of 423 undergraduates (196 from Turkey and 227 from the US) completed the Buri Parent Authority Questionnaire to report on the parenting styles of their parents. They also reported on their own college GPA and completed the Rosenberg self-esteem measure. Some adjustment of the parenting scales was needed in order to achieve cross-cultural measurement invariance. Our study revealed that there were differences of parental style both between and within the two countries. Fathers were reported to be more authoritarian than mothers, and mothers to be more authoritative. Higher levels of authoritarian parenting by fathers was found in the American data. Some parental authority measures were associated with the students’ self-esteem, and all of these involved paternal authority. Paternal authoritarian parenting was negatively associated with the students’ self-esteem in the Turkish data, with paternal authoritative parenting positively associated with the self-esteem of the American students only. The study’s findings suggest that researchers should not ignore differences in parental authority style between mothers and fathers, nor differences between different countries. In particular, the role of fathers should not be


Parenting Style and Developmental Outcomes
Through parenting techniques, parents attempt to foster the behaviors and attitudes in their children that they themselves value, with considerable evidence that parenting is linked to children's outcomes (Li et al., 2010;Sorkhabi, 2005;Spera, 2005). Certain types of parenting behaviors have been found to be particularly implicated in the developmental outcomes of children: i.e., academic performance (Beyer, 1995), and self-esteem (Furnham & Cheng, 2000;McKinney & Renk, 2008;Tunç & Tezer, 2006). Parenting style has been operationalized in a variety of ways. Buri (1991) created the Parental Authority Questionnaire (PAQ) in order to measure parental decision making and the establishment of authority, which has since been used in numerous research studies (e.g., McKinney et al., 2011;McKinney & Renk, 2008).
As described by Baumrind (1971), authoritative parents exert moderate and flexible control over their children's behavior and decision making, whereas authoritarian parents display unilateral decision making with little tolerance for challenge. Investigations have shown that North American children and adolescents whose parents employed authoritative methods of establishing control displayed higher levels of school success (Steinberg et al., 2006) and higher self-esteem (Li et al., 2010;McKinney et al., 2011;Wintre & Yaffe, 2000). In contrast, authoritarian parenting has detrimental outcomes. Individuals raised with authoritarian control have been shown to be less successful academically (Waterman & Lefkowitz, 2017;Wintre & Yaffe, 2000) and to have lower levels of self-esteem (Buri et al., 1988;Furnham & Cheng, 2000).
Although most research has been carried out with school-aged children, there is evidence that parenting style continues to be predictive of the development of emerging adults (Guastella et al., 2014) such as college students. For example, the study by Wintre and Yaffe (2000) found that several aspects of the adjustment of Canadian college students to university (including their GPA) were related to the parenting styles of their parents. Similarly, the study by Waterman and Lefkowitz (2017) found that college students in the USA reported experiencing parenting styles that were related to their academic engagement at college and to their GPAs.

Cross-cultural Study of Parenting Styles
Despite the wealth of research examining the prevalence and outcomes of parenting styles, and of authority assertion in particular, questions have arisen about the generalizability and completeness of the findings. Baumrind's model and many of the findings in the field were based on observation and measurement of North American populations. Generalization to other countries and cultures has sometimes been supported (Ferial et al., 2019;Furnham & Cheng, 2000;Perez-Gramaje et al., 2019;Sorkhabi, 2005); yet, findings from other countries are sometimes inconsistent with predictions based on Baumrind's model (e.g., Chao, 2001). Lansford et al. (2016) advocated cross-cultural comparison as a way of improving understanding of the links between parenting behaviors and children's outcomes. Findings from a variety of countries are useful in not only providing additional valid data about each country, but also because any lack of consistency in the findings presents an impetus to "dig deeper" (Lansford et al., 2016, p. 205) and to explicate factors that may have been overlooked. Moreover, Putnick and Bornstein (2016) stated that parenting behaviors might EDUPIJ • Volume 9 • Issue 3 • 2020 have different meanings across different countries. For that reason, to compare the construct across the differing groups accurately, researchers should ensure the equivalence of meaning of the construct (Chen, 2008;Putnick & Bornstein, 2016). Unfortunately, only a few studies have tested equivalence of the parenting constructs (e.g., Elphinstone et al., 2015;Luk et al., 2016). Therefore, in order to contribute to this goal, the count study aims to compare parenting data from two countries (USA and Turkey) with notable differences after ensuring the equivalence of the parenting authority constructs.
The USA is considered an individualistic culture (Triandis, 1995) where children are raised to particularly value their own goals and achievements. Although it has been described as having both individualistic and collectivist orientations (Oyserman et al., 2002), Turkey is generally considered to be a collectivist country. Besides cultural orientation, there are numerous differences between Turkey and the US that could influence the parenting behavior of mothers and fathers such as gender distribution in the labor force, typical family size, and the educational attainment of the parents. In a review investigating the effects of these demographic factors on the academic achievement of children, Beyer (1995) concluded that maternal employment, larger family size, and lower parental educational levels were all associated with lower educational attainment of children, and that effects were mediated by associated variations in parenting behavior and style.

Maternal and Paternal Parenting
The current study also aims to examine and compare the parenting styles of fathers and of mothers in the two countries. Their differing roles may contribute to observed crosscultural differences in parenting effects. Nevertheless, research concerning the specific contributions of each parent to children's developmental outcomes has been somewhat limited (Fagan et al., 2014). It maybe that the two parents typically behave differently, or that the influence of each parent is not considered as being of equal importance, or that each parent has influence over specific domains of adolescent and emergent adult behavior. A recent study revealed that the allocation of specific parenting roles to mothers and fathers have changed over the years (Preisner et al., 2020). Research findings are therefore likely to vary according to the focus on either one or both parents. Moreover, the specific parenting roles of mothers and fathers as well as changes in these roles may vary according to different cultures. If researchers do not differentiate these systematically, their findings about cross-cultural differences may be limited and inconsistent.
Most of the studies on parenting behavior and its association with developmental outcomes considered only one parent's contribution, which has generally been that of the mother (Li et al., 2010), or from the averaged parenting of both mothers and fathers (Tunç & Tezer, 2006). Only a few studies have focused on the effect of both maternal and paternal parenting (Furnham & Cheng, 2000;McKinney et al., 2011) on their children's outcomes. In their meta-analysis, Möller et al. (2016) reported that paternal parenting was more influential than maternal parenting on children's emotional status. On the other hand, Checa et al. (2019) found that maternal parenting was a predictor of children's academic outcomes.

The Current Study
Using data from students in Turkey and the USA, the current paper examines the cultural differences in the link between parenting styles and two developmental outcomes EDUPIJ • Volume 9 • Issue 3 • 2020 (academic achievement and self-esteem). The study will also examine the contribution of fathers and mothers to any cultural moderation.
The research questions of the study are as follows, and concern the responses to questionnaires completed by undergraduates.
 Are there any differences in the demonstration of authority styles exhibited by mothers and fathers, as reported by college students?  Are there country differences in the variations between maternal and paternal parenting authority scores?  Do maternal and paternal authority styles predict the a) GPA and b) self-esteem of college students? If so, does maternal or paternal parenting more strongly predict each outcome?  Are there country differences in the relationships between authority styles exhibited by mothers and fathers?

Participants
First, the researchers obtained approval from the university's ethics committee. Prior to the application of the data collection instruments, the researchers provided information to the participants regarding the purpose of the study and the procedures to be followed. It was explained that there was no obligation to participate in the study and that, as participants, they may stop participating at any time and/or refuse to answer any specific question. All of the participants voluntarily completed the same anonymous pen and paperbased survey.
Using convenience sampling strategy, a total of 423 undergraduate students were recruited from two universities, one in Turkey and the other in the US. Specifically, 196 Turkish students (100 female, 96 male) and 227 American students (137 female, 90 male) were recruited from several departments (Turkey: Education, Physics / USA: Education, Chemistry, Business). Of the participants, 83% were aged between 20 and 23 years old.
Sociodemographic data revealed by the students' responses to questionnaire categories showed that specifically, the American students reported higher maternal and paternal educational attainment than their Turkish counterparts. Whereas the largest category of American mothers (76%) and fathers (61%) held at least some college or associates degree, most Turkish mothers (82%) and fathers (57%) held less than a high school diploma. Turkish students came from larger families (60% having four children or more) than American students (for whom the modal response of 43% was two children). Both the Turkish and American students reported a similar frequency of contact, mostly daily, with their families.

Measures Parenting Styles
The Buri Parental Authority Questionnaire (PAQ; Buri, 1991) was applied in order to measure the students' perception of their mothers' and fathers' authority styles. The questionnaire concerned the way authority and control were achieved using three subscales; 10 items under "authoritativeness" (e.g., "My father/mother directed the activities and decisions of the children through reasoning and discipline"), 10 items under "authoritarianism" (e.g., "Even if his/her children did not agree with him/her, my EDUPIJ • Volume 9 • Issue 3 • 2020 father/mother felt that it was for our own good if we were forced to conform to what he/she thought was right"), and 10 items under "permissiveness" (e.g., My "father/mother did not view him/herself as responsible for directing and guiding my behavior as I was growing up"). The students were asked to respond to each statement for their mothers and fathers separately, based on a 5-point, Likert-type scale, ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). For the participants in Turkey, the scale was translated into Turkish by bilingual judges, and reverse-translation was employed so as to verify each question's accuracy.
Using AMOS, confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs) of the maternal and paternal parenting scales were run separately to examine the validity of the scales according to the two countries participating in the current study. The results indicated that after removing a number of items, both the authoritarian and authoritative parenting scales were deemed to be both reliable and valid. The Cronbach's alpha values of the modified scales were acceptable for authoritarian and authoritative scales in both samples. For the Turkish sample, the Cronbach's alpha values were .72 and .73 for the maternal and paternal authoritarian scale, respectively, and .74 and .75 for the maternal and paternal authoritative scale, respectively. For the American sample, the Cronbach's alpha values were .75 and .76 for the Maternal and Paternal Authoritarian Scale, respectively, and .77 and .78 for the Maternal and Paternal Authoritative Scale, respectively. As detailed in the section on Preliminary Analyses, the Permissive Parenting Scale did not show any measurement invariance, and was therefore dropped from any further analysis.

Self-esteem
Self-esteem was assessed with the Rosenberg Self-esteem Scale (1965), which consists of 10 items (e.g., "I wish I could have more respect for myself"). The students were asked to indicate their agreement with statements about themselves on a 4-point, Likert-type response scale that range from 0 (strongly disagree), to 3 (strongly agree). Total scores on the scale could range from 0 to 30, with higher overall scores indicates higher levels of selfesteem. Existing Turkish translations of the Rosenberg scale (Çuhadaroğlu, 1986) were employed in the current study.
The Rosenberg scale has been widely used in research, and satisfactory reliability and validity has been established. It has proven useful in research with Turkish respondents (Tunç & Tezer, 2006). The scale's Cronbach alpha values showed that the internal consistency of the scale for each own country's sample was reliable, with .82 for the Turkish sample and .89 for the American sample.

Covariates
The sociodemographic variables concerning gender, maternal/paternal educational attainment, family size, and frequency of contact with their families were used as covariates as they could potentially contribute to the students' outcomes.

Data Analysis Strategy
The first step, as suggested by Putnick and Bornstein (2016), applied measurement invariance tests on the parenting measure in a Multigroup Confirmatory Factor Analysis through AMOS (see Preliminary Analyses for details). The suggested cutoff values of acceptable fit were that the Comparative Fit Index (CFI) should be greater than .90 (Bentler, 1992), while the Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) should be lower than .08 (MacCallum et al., 1996). In the second step, the study's research questions were tested, with repeated measure ANCOVA testing applied to Research Questions 1 and 2, and regression analysis applied in testing Research Questions 3 and 4.

Preliminary Analyses Measurement Invariance
After establishing acceptable models for each group, configural invariance, metric invariance, and scalar invariance were tested for each model of parenting. The obtained results showed that after deleting some items from the subscales for which factor loadings were lower than .50, as suggested by Kline (2005), the models were each found to be acceptable, having met the criteria of metric invariance and partial-scalar equivalence for authoritativeness and authoritarianism. On the other hand, both maternal and paternal permissive parenting items were non-invariant (except for one item). Xu (2019) suggested that there must be at least two invariant items per subscale. Since permissive parenting did not meet this criterion, permissive parenting was removed from all subsequent analyses. Then, the regression coefficients and means were compared between one model (where all items were constrained) and a second model (where only invariant items were constrained) for the two-factor parenting scale. The results revealed that the discrepancy between the models was not statistically significant. It was therefore deemed appropriate to compare the two-factor parenting scale as well as its associations to developmental outcomes for both Turkey and the USA. Table 1 shows the correlations between covariates, maternal and paternal parenting, self-esteem, and college GPA in both samples.

Research Question 1. Differences in Maternal and Paternal Authority Styles
The means and standard deviations for each authority style by parental gender are reported as presented in Table 2. The repeated measures ANCOVA summarized in Table 3 revealed a significant parental gender effect for authoritarian and authoritative parenting. As seen in Table 2, the fathers were perceived overall to be more authoritarian than the mothers; and the mothers were perceived overall to be more authoritative than the fathers. Note: Parenting scales ranged from 4 to 20 Table 2 shows the parenting scores for the two countries, and Table 3 shows the results of a repeated measure ANCOVA comparing the scores for the two countries on each parenting measure. The scores for the two countries differed for authoritarian parenting, F(1,404) = 51.37, p < .05, η p 2 = .04. The American parents were perceived to be more authoritarian than their Turkish counterparts by 1.02 points, 95% CI [0.81, 2.45]. However, there was no country difference seen for authoritative parenting. Differences in the parenting ratings of mothers and fathers (both provided by the same respondent) represent a parent-gender effect. The repeated measures ANCOVA of Table 3 presents a comparison of the parenting scores of mothers and fathers; the interaction terms show if the size of these parent-gender differences was consistent between the two countries. The interaction results of the repeated measures ANCOVA (see Table 3) showed that the difference between maternal and paternal authoritarian parenting styles was not EDUPIJ • Volume 9 • Issue 3 • 2020 the same in Turkey and the US, F(1,421) = 4.02, p < .05, η p 2 = .01. The scores in Table 2 show that there was no difference between maternal and paternal authoritarian parenting in Turkey, whereas the American fathers were perceived to be more authoritarian than American mothers by 0.8 points, 95% CI [0.10, 0.29]. On the other hand, the differences between maternal and paternal authoritative parenting styles had a similar pattern in both Turkey and the USA. In both countries, the mothers were perceived to be more authoritative than the fathers, by 0.85 points, 95% CI [0.01,0.20] in Turkey and 0.43 points, 95% CI [0.39, 0.35] in the US (see Table 2).

Research Question 3. Relationships between Maternal and Paternal Parenting Authority Styles and Student Outcomes and Parent-Gender Differences in these Relationships
Two regression analyses were conducted in order to examine the relationships between parental authority styles and the GPA and self-esteem of the students across both countries, with the results presented in Table 4.

Maternal and paternal parenting styles and GPA of college students
As seen in Table 4, the regression analysis shows that neither maternal nor paternal authority style (whether authoritarian or authoritative) was significantly related to college GPA. Table 4 shows that neither maternal nor paternal authoritarian parenting was directly related to self-esteem. Paternal authoritative parenting was positively related to selfesteem, but maternal authoritative parenting was not related. Custom contrast analysis carried out as a follow-up to this last finding showed that the different relationship of maternal and paternal authoritative parenting to self-esteem was significant, F(1,378) = 2.86, p < .10, η p 2 = .01. For every additional point in paternal authoritative parenting, self-esteem of the college students increased by 1.22 points on the 30-point scale. * p < .05, ** p < .01, *** p < .001

Research Question 4. Differences in the Outcomes Related to Maternal and Paternal Parenting Authority Scores in Turkey and the US
The non-significant interaction terms in the regression analyses of Table 4 showed that the relationships between maternal and paternal parenting and college GPA were not attributable to country.

Self-esteem
As shown in Table 4, neither maternal nor paternal authoritarian parenting overall were related to self-esteem. However, the interaction term of the regression analysis for selfesteem, as reported in Table 4, showed that there was a difference due to country in the relationships between authoritarian parenting and self-esteem for paternal parenting only, B = -2.04, F(1,393) = 7.30, p < .01, η p 2 = .01. Post-hoc analyses revealed that paternal authoritarian parenting was negatively associated with self-esteem in the Turkish sample, B = -1.83, SE = .54, p < .001, η p 2 = .06, whereas there was no significant association found between paternal authoritarian parenting and self-esteem in the American sample. Similarly, with regards to authoritative parenting, the interaction terms in Table 4 show that there was a country difference in the relationships between paternal authoritative parenting and selfesteem, B = -1.61, F(1,393) = 5.55, p < .01, η p 2 = .01. Post-hoc analyses revealed that paternal authoritative parenting was positively associated with self-esteem in the American sample, B = 1.28, SE = .44, p < .01, η p 2 = .04, whereas there was no significant association found between paternal authoritative parenting and self-esteem in the Turkish sample.

Discussion
Due to inconsistencies in the literature about the cultural basis of parenting styles, and the limited extent to which findings derived from investigations in the USA and other western countries can be generalized to families in other cultures, the current study gathered comparative data about parental authority styles in both the USA and Turkey, as well as evidence about links between those styles and developmental outcomes in their offspring. We focused on the aspect of parenting concerning the establishment of authority. In addition, we examined the separate contributions of mothers and fathers in each country, believing that this distinction has been insufficiently studied in previous literature and that neglect to systematically differentiate the role of each parent, particularly in cross-cultural studies, may well have contributed to any lack of consistency in the published findings.
The data collected from Turkey and the US in the current study showed that mothers and fathers differed in the way that they established authority in the parental context, and that some of the differences were not the same between the two countries. Overall, fathers were reported to be more authoritarian than mothers, and that mothers were more authoritative than fathers. These findings concerning authoritative parenting support the literature reviewed by Grusec and Goodnow (1994), which showed that mothers were less likely than fathers to use power assertion as a means of behavioral control, but more likely to use explanation and reasoning. However, further examination showed some cultural moderation in that the parent-gender differences were not entirely the same for the two countries in question. The greater display of authoritarian parenting by fathers over mothers resulted from the American data; whereas, in Turkey, mothers and fathers were reported to be equally authoritarian.
These findings indicate that, on average, American students described parenting that resembled "traditional" family units (Frost, 2009), whereby the father more often than the mother enacted the role of the stricter and more controlling authority figure, while the Turkish students reported, on average, that in their families, the two parents displayed this authoritarian role almost equally. These findings regarding authoritarian parenting did not support the literature regarding mothers and fathers in the US and Turkey (Frost, 2009;Metindoğan, 2015). Contrary to the conclusion of Fagan et al. (2014), in that parenting by mothers and fathers was similar, the current study found differences in the maternal and paternal parenting behaviors in the US. However, no differences were found according to the Turkish data, which represented the non-Western country in the study.
Our findings differ from several Turkish reports of continuing parenting role differentiation in Turkey (Beşpınar, 2013). Previous information about Turkey has shown that fewer mothers formed part of the workforce than in the US (World Bank, 2017), and were therefore responsible for more hours of childcare in the Turkish familial unit. Perhaps the longer term of sole responsibility for childcare experienced by stay-at-home Turkish mothers has required them to take on an equal share of the disciplinarian role as well as nurturing role, and indeed to be just as likely to be the authority figure of the household as the children's father.
The results of the current study have shown that it is important for researchers of parenting to be specific about which parent they have asked participant children to describe. As discussed previously, some past research instructed participants to report on the behaviors of "parents," or have concentrated solely on maternal behavior. However, our results indicate that such research practices may be misleading or incomplete, having found certain differences in the behavior of mothers and fathers regarding their children. The student participants in both countries studied in this research reported these differences.
An important focus of the current study was whether or not parental authority styles are related to developmental outcomes of their offspring. Our results have shown that some parental authority measures were related to the self-esteem of the students. Where relationships were found, they involved paternal authority. The authority style of the mothers (whether authoritarian or authoritative) were not found to be related to their children's self-esteem. More specifically, authoritative parenting by fathers, but not mothers, was positively related to the self-esteem of the students. The positive association between authoritative parenting and self-esteem is supported by the findings of previous research (Tunç & Tezer, 2006); however, this earlier study did not investigate the specific influence of paternal parenting on self-esteem development.
Authoritarian parenting was also found to have some relationship to self-esteem, but to explain this we found it necessary to consider both parental gender and country. In Turkey, EDUPIJ • Volume 9 • Issue 3 • 2020 paternal authoritarian parenting was negatively related to self-esteem, whereas such parenting by American fathers was not found to be related to self-esteem. Thus, there was some limited support for our expectation that the pattern of parental influence on children's outcomes would depend on parental gender and the interplay of parental gender and the country in which the parenting occurred.
Our results showed that paternal authority style had a greater relationship to outcomes than did maternal style. In contrast, other researchers (Waterman & Lefkowitz, 2017;Wintre & Yaffe, 2000) have reported that maternal parenting was influential over the academic outcomes of female college students. More specifically, our results showed that paternal authoritative parenting had a positive relationship with self-esteem in the US sample; and that in Turkey only, paternal authoritarian parenting had a negative relationship. Our findings are consistent with those of Möller et al. (2016), in which they indicated stronger associations between paternal parenting and children's emotional development. However, the location differential between parenting style effects in each country found in the current study requires further research. We found no previous research showing more positive effects of paternal over maternal authoritative parenting in American parents. Moreover, although previous research showed that authoritarian parenting had a negative effect on self-esteem (Furnham & Cheng, 2000;Perez-Gramaje, 2019;Sorkhabi, 2005), the limitation of this finding in the current study to Turkey requires further investigation. One (somewhat paradoxical) explanation can be derived from the finding that Turkish fathers were less involved in their children's lives than the mothers (Metindoğan, 2015); with Turkish children having lower levels of interaction in general with their fathers, and, therefore, any negative messages conveyed by paternal (authoritarian) interactions become more salient when they occur. Further research is needed to clarify this. Indeed, a similar explanation may hold also for the American findings given that the American students reported differential parenting by their mothers and fathers that retains the parental roles of "traditional" families (Frost, 2009). This too requires further investigation.
It is surprising that our data did not show more evidence that parental authority style was related to the college students' academic achievement. Numerous previous studies have found a positive relationship between authoritative parenting and academic competence in North America (e.g., Steinberg et al., 2006;Wintre & Yaffe, 2000) and also for other locations (Ferial et al., 2019;Sorkhabi, 2005). Alternative studies have shown that authoritarian parenting (Waterman & Lefkowitz, 2017;Wintre & Yaffe, 2000) negatively related to academic competence. The discrepancy between the current study's results and other research may be that whereas most previous studies concerned high school students, the current study was based upon university students who may have lived on or near campus and not, therefore, predominantly with their families. It is likely that parents with collegeaged offspring have less interaction, specifically regarding their academic work and responsibilities. The fact that we found some parenting style influences (from fathers) on self-esteem suggests that self-esteem results from ongoing interactions with fathers that continue into young adulthood or from messages that endure from earlier developmental stages. The importance of co-residence on parenting effect is an interesting question that could be addressed by future research.

General Implications of The Study
An important implication of the current study's findings is that researchers should not treat fathers and mothers as equivalent in terms of their behavior or influence. Many EDUPIJ • Volume 9 • Issue 3 • 2020 previous studies have asked participants to report on "parents," i.e., either parent rather than specifically nominating just the father or mother. Where the parenting style of a particular parent have been targeted, it has mostly been the mother who has participated. However, the relationships found in the current study between parenting and outcomes concerned only paternal parenting.
We chose to compare parental authority style and its outcomes in two countries that differed in several ways, questioning if particular parenting strategies and styles might function differently in countries with different normative authority and relationship structures. We found some evidence that there were country differences involving authoritarian parenting. Mothers and fathers differed in authoritarian parenting (with fathers being more authoritarian) in the US, but that was not the case found in Turkey. Secondly, authoritarian parenting by fathers was found to be negatively related to selfesteem in Turkey, yet saw no relationship in the US. In addition, authoritative parenting was associated with self-esteem in the American sample only. These culturally different findings point to the danger of overgeneralizing conclusions from one group to another and prohibit us from making culturally neutral recommendations about parenting. Ethnocentrism is one example of overgeneralization, but so too is lack of sensitivity to other group differences within countries. Social groups differ in prevalent and preferred patterns of family relationships and influence, and are therefore likely to differ in the parenting techniques that parents employ to achieve them, and the allocation of these techniques to each parent.

Limitations and Future Research
The current study contributes to the parenting literature by showing how maternal and paternal parenting authority styles can differ, when such differences were related to the academic and self-esteem outcomes of young adults, and that some findings may depend upon the country context. However, some aspects of the current study limit the conclusions that can be drawn.
The first important limitation is the correlational design. Although a very common approach applied in this area of research, it does not provide evidence about causality, nor about the sequence of factors. Variables unaccounted for in the design may play a role in the observed relationships. Parenting may influence children's outcomes, but parenting behavior is likely to be carried out, at least in part, in response to the characteristics of the children. For example, parents may not need to monitor or control the behavioral choices of children who are succeeding at school, or who are more emotionally stable.
Another limitation of the current study is its reliance upon self-reporting. Obtaining data on parenting behaviors from parents, as well their offspring, would provide more detailed information about the relationships between parental behaviors and developmental outcomes. Additionally, replicating the study in other countries might reveal different parenting practices and how these are adopted by mothers and fathers. An important part of such an approach would be clarification of the factors, including parent-gender roles, that vary between countries and that are related to different parenting practices. Possible factors include the individualistic-collectivist orientation (Triandis, 1995) and children's interpretations of particular parenting techniques (Sorkhabi, 2005). Such studies would help us to understand the processes by which countries foster different parenting practices by mothers and fathers. EDUPIJ • Volume 9 • Issue 3 • 2020 Finally, we found that the existing form of the Buri (1991) parenting measure was an unsatisfactory instrument for which to study our cross-cultural data. Whilst we were able to achieve satisfactory measurement invariance for the authoritarian and authoritative scales of the Buri measure, but only after deleting those items that were apparently perceived differently in the two countries; we were unable to achieve satisfactory invariance for the permissive parenting scale, and so could not use it to examine the study's research questions. Elphinstone et al. (2015) reported similar difficulties when using a shortened form of the Buri measure for cross-cultural comparison. Apparently, there are differences in the way in which emerging adults in Turkey and the USA conceptualize parenting. Examination of such culturally different parenting conceptualization is an important topic for future research, and a necessary basis for the development of parenting measures that are crossculturally equivalent.

Conclusion
The current study revealed that after achieving the psychometric equivalence of Buri's Parental Authority Questionnaire across Turkey and the US, there were parenting authority style differences both between and within the two countries. Mothers and fathers were perceived to have some differences in the manner in which they established authority. However, discrepancies between maternal and paternal parenting differed from one country to the other. We also found that paternal parenting only related to the self-esteem of college students, but that this also was dependent on the country. Our findings serve as a warning that it is a mistake to generalize findings from one parent to another. Therefore, the role of fathers should not be overlooked. Finally, our findings suggest that the role of parenting on developmental outcomes is likely to differ from one country to another.