Identifying Factors Contributing to the Development of Parental Psychological Control

• In Event: Poster Session 14
  In Poster Session: PS 14 Topic - Parenting & Parent-Child Relationships

Abstract

Parental psychological control (PPC) involves manipulative, interfering attempts to control the child’s socioemotional development through inhibiting and/or invalidating tactics (Barber, 1996), and is consistently linked to adverse child outcomes (e.g., internalizing and externalizing problems, Stone et al., 2013). Discerning antecedents of PPC has implications for reducing its deleterious consequences on the parent-child relationship and child functioning (Scharf & Goldner, 2018), but there remains limited longitudinal evidence to establish these causal associations. According to Belsky’s (1984) process model of parenting, multiple factors influence parental behaviors, including parental resources, child functioning, and contextual demands. Therefore, this longitudinal study tested three latent factors of parent, child, and neighborhood characteristics as related to changes in PPC from ages 10 to 12. Given strong theory and some evidence that the etiology (and effects) of PPC vary by child gender (Scharf & Goldner, 2018), this investigation also explored gender effects.
Participants were 220 parents and their children (50.5% female; 45.5% Latinx, 18.2% Black, 11.8% White, and 24.6% multi-ethnic/racial). At age 10, parent characteristics were assessed using parent reports of alcohol dependence on the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory (MCMI-III; Millon, 1994), depressive symptoms on the Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI; Derogatis, 1975), and feelings of helplessness on the Caregiving Helplessness Questionnaire (George & Solomon, 1998, 2007). Child characteristics were assessed via parent reports of internalizing and externalizing problems on the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL; Achenbach & Rescorla, 2001), and child reports of inhibitory control on the Early Adolescent Temperament Questionnaire Revised (EATQ-R; Ellis & Rothbart, 2001). Neighborhood characteristics were indicated using neighborhood violent crime, poverty, and single parent household rates on the American Community Survey and FBI Uniform Crime Reports. At ages 10 and 12, children reported on PPC using Barber’s (1996) Psychological Control Scale.
Confirmatory analyses using the lavaan package in RStudio (Rosseel, 2012) indicated that a three-factor model of parent, child, and neighborhood characteristics fit the data well, CFI = .960, TLI = .939, RMSEA = .052 (CI 90% = <.001 - .091), SRMR = .049, and significantly better than a one-factor model, (∆X2 = 37.066, p < .001). Controlling for ethnicity-race, findings from structural equation modeling analyses did not find relations between proposed antecedents and PPC, though PPC at age 10 predicted PPC at age 12, b = .118, SE = .020, p < .001. However, a multigroup analysis by gender revealed a significant contribution of higher neighborhood risk to PPC for girls, b = .118, SE = .020, p < .001, over and above prior PPC, b = .110, SE = .023, p < .001, but not for boys.
These findings suggest that high-risk neighborhood environments influence the development of PPC toward daughters, but not toward sons. Stressful environmental conditions may overwhelm resources and introduce threats that prompt parents to implement intrusive and demanding parenting to gain control and protect children. In addition, perceived threats toward daughters may be greater than those toward sons. Ongoing analyses will evaluate the proposed model using refined measures of child adjustment and further explore these relations by ethnicity-race.

Authors

• Duyen T. Trang, University of California - Riverside
  Presenting Author

• Tuppett M. Yates, University of California - Riverside
  Non-Presenting Author