Parental Provision of Structure: Implementation and Correlates in Three Domains

This study examined parents’ provision of structure, defined as the organization of the environment to facilitate competence, and the degree to which it supports versus controls children’s autonomy, in the domains of homework and studying, unsupervised time, and responsibilities in a diverse sample of sixth-grade children and their parents. Four components of structure and four components of autonomy support were combined into composites that were independent. Parents provided the most structure and least autonomy support in the unsupervised domain. Structure was associated with several competence outcomes in the unsupervised domain, whereas relations between autonomy support and outcomes were more prevalent in the other domains. Results suggest the importance of differentiating structure and the way it is implemented and considering the meaning of structure within different domains.