Adolescents' Well-Being as a Function of Perceived Interparental Consistency

High school students reported separately on mothers and fathers' responsiveness and demandingness and their own academic achievement and engagement, involvement in problem behavior, psychosocial development, and internalized distress.Mothers and fathers were classified as authoritative, authoritarian, indulgent, or indifferent, and adolescents from homes characterized by different types of interparental consistency were compared with those from homes where parents were not consistent.Adolescents with one authoritative parent exhibited greater academic competence than did peers with parents who were consistent but nonauthoritative.Adolescents with one authoritative and one nonauthoritative parent exhibited greater concurrent internalized distress than did youth from consistent homes, but these findings were not observed longitudinally. Article:Research on child socialization over the past several decades has consistently demonstrated that one of the most potent influences on the psychological and behavioral well-being of adolescents is the type of parenting they experience.Specifically, attention has focused on young people whose parents hold high standards for their offsprings' behavior, who maintain warm and supportive relationships with their children, and who encourage children to develop and express their own ideas and opinions.Such a style of parenting is termed authoritative.Children of all ages whose parents engage in authoritative parenting perform better in school, engage in less misconduct, and are better adjusted psychologically than their peers raised in nonauthoritative homes.(See Maccoby & Martin, 1983; Steinberg, 1990, for reviews.)Authoritative parenting is generally contrasted with three other parenting styles (Maccoby & Martin, 1983).Authoritarian parents have rigid expectations about their children's behavior and are emotionally distant and unresponsive in the parenting role.Indulgent parents have warm and supportive relationships with their children but hold few expectations about mature and responsible behavior, Finally, indifferent parents are uninvolved in their children's lives, hold few expectations about mature and responsible behavior, and maintain cold and distant relationships with youth.Adolescents from these types of homes typically exhibit less optimal psychological and behavioral adjustment than do their peers who are raised by authoritative parents (Lamborn, Mounts, Steinberg, & Dornbusch,