Abstract
A path-analytic model was employed to examine relations between parent-reported instrumental and expressive traits, child-reported parental acceptance, and adolescent self-esteem and self-consciousness. Analyses were run separately for each parent-child dyad. It was predicted that any relations between parental traits and child adjustment would be mediated by parental acceptance, especially for expressive traits. This prediction was confirmed for families with daughters. The findings suggest, for the daughter dyads, that parents with expressive traits are more likely to communicate acceptance which, in turn, fosters child adjustment. Of the total variance accounted for in the child adjustment indices, most was due to the contribution of parental acceptance to the model. A comparison of these results with those of previous studies suggests that relations between parental traits and the other variables in the path model are less dramatic when parents' report of their own personality characteristics are employed than when child report is employed. Future research may be improved by serious consideration of mediating variables rather than examining relations between distally-related parent and child variables.
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The research reported here was supported by Father Flanagan's Boys Home, Inc., by a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, “Family Relations in Early Adolescence,” and by a Graduate School Research Fellowship awarded to the senior author from Virginia Commonwealth University. The authors are grateful to Karl Kelley for his statistical advice.
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Holmbeck, G.N., Hill, J.P. A path-analytic approach to the relations between parental traits and acceptance and adolescent adjustment. Sex Roles 14, 315–334 (1986). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00287582
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00287582