Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
European Conference of Developmental Psychology, Turku, Finlandiya, 28 Ağustos - 01 Eylül 2023, ss.1
PARENTING PROFILES, CHILD EXTERNALIZING BEHAVIORS, AND THE MODERATOR ROLE OF NEGATIVE AFFECT: A NATIONALLY REPRESENTATIVE STUDY
This study aimed to examine the relationship between parenting profiles, child temperament, and externalizing behaviors in children and adolescents. In the previous research, there are contradictory results related to the effects of parenting styles accepted in the literature on child outcomes across different cultural contexts. Therefore, in the present study, parenting profiles were considered as a concept derived from different dimensions of perceived parenting and tackled with their cultural context. Furthermore, the moderator role of negative affectivity as a temperamental characteristic was also examined in order to understand better the relationship between parenting and child externalizing behaviors.
The present study was conducted as a part of a nationally representative project with the sample of 3218 children aged 9-18 and their mothers from Turkey. Externalizing behaviors and negative affectivity were measured in children using the Child Behavior Checklist and The Early Adolescent Temperament Questionnaire, respectively, through maternal report. Parenting profiles were investigated based on children's perceptions of parenting behaviors, examining 11 dimensions including behavioral control, psychological control, parental acceptance/rejection, comparison, inductive reasoning, performance pressure, and overprotection. Descriptive statistics, one-way analysis of variance, and hierarchical multiple regression analysis were used to analyze the data.
The project determined four distinct parenting profiles: sensitive/ideal, insensitive/hostile, warm/intrusive, and disengaged. Sensitive/ideal parenting is characterized by the highest levels of warmth, monitoring, and inductive reasoning, and the lowest levels of hostility, rejection, psychological control, and comparison. The insensitive/hostile profile is defined by high levels of negative parenting behaviors such as hostility, rejection, and psychological control, and low levels of positive behaviors such as warmth, inductive reasoning, and child disclosure. Anxious/intrusive parenting is marked by the high levels of overprotection, as well as a mix of positive behaviors (e.g. warmth, monitoring, child disclosure) and negative behaviors (e.g. psychological control, performance pressure, comparison). Disengaged parenting is characterized by low levels across all parenting dimensions.
The results indicated that children with mothers who exhibited an insensitive/hostile parenting style displayed the highest levels of externalizing behaviors. This was followed by children with mothers anxious/intrusive and children with mothers disengaged, respectively. Children with sensitive/ideal mothers exhibited the lowest levels of externalizing behaviors. All clusters were significantly different from each other. Furtermore, child negative affectivity plays a moderating role in determining the extent to which parenting influence child externalizing behaviors. The analysis revealed that while the externalizing behaviors of children with low levels of negative affect were not significantly influenced by their mothers' parenting styles, children with high levels of negative affect exhibited differing levels of externalizing behaviors in relation to the specific parenting style showed by their mothers.
This study was conducted using a representative sample from Turkey, encompassing a diversity of cultural characteristics both from Eastern and Western. Given this, the findings of this research pertaining to the effects of parenting profiles on child behavior must be considered within the cultural context. Besides, the study also highlights the moderating role of a child's temperament in the relationship between parenting and child behavior, which is consistent with the diathesis-stress theory.