Abstract
Parents often try to promote internalization of valued behaviors by making their regard contingent on children’s enactment of those behaviors. We present findings suggesting that while parental conditional regard (PCR) might lead to enactment of expected behaviors, this practice has the following costs: (1) stressful internalization of parental expectations, (2) rigid and low-quality performance (3) self-esteem fluctuations and poor well-being, and (4) negative affect towards parents. Importantly, our research suggests that positive PCR (i.e., giving more regard when children comply) is quite harmful despite its seemingly benign nature. Several studies suggest that: (1) there is an inter-generational transmission of PCR (2) parents’ contingent self-esteem and a competitive world view enhance parents’ inclination to use PCR, and (3) parents use of PCR increases when they have infants who are easily frustrated. Overall, the findings suggest that PCR is a harmful practice originating, at least partly, from stressful parental experiences.
Note:
Much of the research reported in this chapter was supported by grants from the Israel-US Bi-National Science foundation and from the Israel Science Foundation.
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- 1.
Recently, Soenens and his colleagues (e.g., Soenens et al., 2010) have introduced the concept of dependency-oriented and achievement-oriented psychological control. These concepts are very close to the concept of domain-specific conditional regard, although they include a guilt arousal component that is not included in our construct and scales, and they also do not separate between positive and negative parental regard. Future research may attempt to examine the relations between the concepts and the scales, and perhaps integrate them.
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Assor, A., Kanat-Maymon, Y., Roth, G. (2014). Parental Conditional Regard: Psychological Costs and Antecedents. In: Weinstein, N. (eds) Human Motivation and Interpersonal Relationships. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-8542-6_10
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