Implications of Congruence and Incongruence in Adolescent and Mother Reports of Maternal Acceptance

• In Event: Poster Session 06
  In Poster Session: PS 06 Topic - Parenting & Parent-Child Relationships

Abstract

Previous research has demonstrated that adolescent-parent reporting discrepancies on parenting may reflect more than measurement error, that is informant discrepancies may provide meaningful information concerning family functioning and adolescent adjustment (De Los Reyes & Ohannessian, 2016). However, there is a scarcity of research investigating the association between informant congruence/incongruence on parenting and adolescent adjustment (see Hou et al., 2019). Hence, the goal of the present study was to examine the link between congruence and incongruence between adolescents’ and mothers’ perceptions of maternal acceptance and adolescent internalizing and externalizing problems. Participants were 689 Turkish adolescents (Mage = 13.95; SD = .94; 56.9% girls) and their mothers. Both adolescents and mothers reported on maternal acceptance. Adolescents also reported on their own internalizing and externalizing problems. Separate polynomial regression analyses with response surface analyses revealed a negative linear relationship between adolescent-mother congruence on maternal acceptance and adolescents’ internalizing and externalizing problems, indicating that when adolescents and mothers both reported relatively higher levels of maternal acceptance, adolescents tended to display lower levels of problem behaviors. In addition, it was shown that there was a negative linear relationship between adolescent-mother incongruence on maternal acceptance and adolescents’ internalizing problems, meaning that internalizing problems were higher when adolescents’ reports of maternal acceptance were lower than mothers’ corresponding reports compared to the other way around. These results are consistent with previous research showing that congruent reports at higher levels of positive parenting relate to better adolescent adjustment (e.g., Laird & De Los Reyes, 2013; Lippold et al., 2011) whereas incongruent reports, particularly when adolescents have lower perceptions of positive parenting compared to their parents, relate to worse adolescent adjustment (e.g., Hou et al., 2017; Reidler & Swenson, 2012). Therefore, current findings along with previous research imply that adolescent-mother congruence at high levels of positive parenting (e.g., maternal acceptance) may reflect a healthier mother-adolescent relationship that might buffer against adjustment problems. On the other hand, it seems that adolescents’ lower perceptions of maternal acceptance than what mothers reported may reflect low mother-adolescent relationship quality and problems in mother-adolescent communication, and thus are maladaptive for adolescent development. Overall, findings suggest that adolescent-parent reporting congruence and incongruence may be used as a means for predicting adolescent adjustment outcomes.

Author

• Sule Selcuk, Hacettepe University
  Presenting Author