The role of intrusive parenting in the relationship between peer management strategies and peer affiliation

Abstract

The role of intrusive (i.e., psychologically controlling) parenting in the relationship between three peer management strategies (prohibiting, guiding, supporting) and adolescents' peer deviant behavior and peer group belongingness was examined. Three important findings emerged. First, consistent with previous research, prohibiting was positively related to adolescents' affiliations with deviant friends, whereas support was positively related to a sense of group belongingness. Guiding was negatively related to group belongingness. Second, the direct effect of prohibiting on adolescents' affiliations with deviant friends was substantially accounted for by perceived parental psychological control. Third, the effect of guiding was moderated by perceived psychological control, so that it negatively predicted a sense of group belongingness only under conditions of high psychological control. The findings indicate that parental peer management strategies are associated with lower deviant and more positive peer affiliations, if they are not perceived as intruding upon adolescents' private world.

Introduction

Adolescents' involvement with deviant peers is generally viewed as a strong risk factor in the development of behavior problems and negative adjustment. Past research has consistently established linkages between adolescents' affiliation with deviant peers and their own levels of delinquency (e.g., Snyder, Dishion, & Patterson, 1986), drug use (e.g., Barrera, Biglan, Ary, & Li, 2001), and general maladjustment (e.g., Vitaro, Brendgen, & Wanner, 2005). Conversely, positive peer involvement and a sense of belonging to a peer group seem to protect against such problem behaviors (Lansford, Criss, Pettit, Dodge, & Bates, 2003) and to facilitate positive self-esteem and emotional adjustment (Parker & Asher, 1993).

Given the implications of adolescents' peer affiliations for their own psychosocial development, previous research has devoted attention to the role of socialization figures, particularly parents, in adolescents' development of peer relations. One important line of research has focused on parents' direct attempts to manage and regulate their children's peer relationships, for instance by designing and structuring settings in which children can meet peers, by giving advice, or by supervising peer relations (Ladd and Pettit, 2002, Vernberg et al., 1993). Another line of research has addressed the role of parents' general rearing style (Ladd & Pettit, 2002) and the role of intrusive parenting in particular (Barber & Harmon, 2002) in adolescents' social and behavioral development. The general aim of the present study was to integrate both strands of research by examining the role of intrusive (i.e., psychologically controlling) parenting in the relationship between parents' peer management strategies and adolescents' peer deviant behavior and peer group belongingness.

A number of peer management strategies have been identified in the literature, including prohibiting, guiding, and supporting (Mounts, 2002, Tilton-Weaver and Galambos, 2003). Prohibiting pertains to the degree to which parents do not allow their adolescents to associate with particular peers. Guiding involves parental communication about their expectations, norms, and values concerning friendships and communication about possible consequences of friendships. Supporting refers to parents' encouragement of specific friendships and to the provision of an environment at home where adolescents can interact with their friends.

Previous research has shown that a supporting strategy for peer relations is generally associated with beneficial outcomes such as less affiliation with deviant and drug using friends (Tilton-Weaver & Galambos, 2003) and less own drug use (Mounts, 2002). As such, supporting peer relationships appears to protect adolescents against negative peer involvement. Unlike supporting, guiding was generally unrelated to adolescent problem behaviors (Mounts, 2002), whereas a strategy of prohibiting friendships or communicating disapproval of friendships was positively related to affiliation with deviant peers (Mounts, 2002, Tilton-Weaver and Galambos, 2003). Apparently, prohibiting adolescents to associate with particular peers may be counterproductive because it increases rather than decreases the likelihood that adolescents associate with disapproved peers. Prohibiting may also arise as a reaction to adolescents' affiliation with deviant friends, as parents may begin to prohibit certain peer relationships when their adolescents are in contact with deviant peers. These possibilities need not exclude each other, because the relation between peer management strategies and adolescent behavior is most likely a reciprocal one (Tilton-Weaver & Galambos, 2003).

The goal of the present study was to extend the research on the effects of peer management strategies on adolescent social development by examining how perceived parental rearing style might interact with peer management strategies in predicting two outcomes: association with deviant peers and a sense of group belongingness. We considered perceived parental style as both a mediator and a moderator of the relationship between parental peer management strategies and adolescent behavior.

There is research that illustrates the moderating role of parenting style in associations between parenting practices and adolescent behaviors (Darling and Steinberg, 1993, Mize and Pettit, 1997, Mounts, 2002). Mize and Pettit (1997), for instance, demonstrated an interaction between mothers' coaching of the child's peer relationships and the general affective quality of the mother–child relationship in predicting social competence, such that children were more socially competent in peer relations if mothers' coaching occurred within a highly synchronous and warm relationship. Analogously, Steinberg, Lamborn, Dornbusch, and Darling (1992) have shown that parental monitoring is more strongly related to school achievement within an authoritative parenting context.

The goal of the present study was to extend this relatively small body of research by focusing on the moderating and mediating roles of the rearing style of parental intrusiveness or psychological control (Barber & Harmon, 2002) on adolescent behavior. Parents who show psychological control do not empathize with their children's needs and pressure their children to comply with the parents' own wishes and demands through intrusive techniques. This parental style can undermine their children's sense of autonomy and volition (Grolnick, 2003), thereby putting the children at risk for a variety of emotional and behavioral problems including internalizing problems and deviant behavior (Barber, 1996, Conger et al., 1997, Soenens et al., 2005).

In the following two sections, we elaborate on how perceived parental control might either serve as a mediator or moderator in the peer management–peer affiliation relationship. We consider this relation for three peer management strategies — prohibiting, supporting and guiding. We consider this relation on two outcomes —adolescents' affiliation with deviant peers, and also their sense of belongingness experienced in peer relationships. These are two orthogonal dimensions. The type of peers with whom adolescents affiliate is not coincident with whether they feel secure in those affiliations (Lansford et al., 2003). Lansford et al. (2003), for instance, found that, although affiliating with deviant peers tends to correlate negatively with a sense of belongingness and security within the peer group, both constructs are relatively orthogonal. Moreover, unlike affiliations with deviant peers, a positive sense of peer group belongingness seems to serve as a protective or buffering factor against problem behaviors (Lansford et al., 2003). Because affiliation with deviant friends and peer group belongingness represent two qualitatively different indicators of adolescents' social development, both were considered as outcomes in the present study.

The possibility that psychological control mediates associations between peer management strategies and adolescent behavior implies that adolescents' perceptions of parental control may explain why peer management strategies are more or less effective in producing desired social behaviors. In other words, the association between peer management strategies and indicators of social development would be substantially accounted for by the degree to which these strategies are experienced as controlling. This possibility is discussed for each of the three peer management strategies.

As noted, the parental strategy of prohibiting is positively related to deviant peer affiliations. This rather paradoxical finding may indicate that prohibiting backfires and elicits rather than diminishes involvement with deviant peers, or that an adolescent's involvement with deviant peers may elicit parental concern about their adolescents' peers, which results in prohibiting as a means to manage their adolescents' peer relationships. In either case, adolescents of parents who use a prohibiting peer management strategy would be likely to perceive their parents as intrusive, which would increase the likelihood of defying parental norms.

This hypothesis is consistent with work on the legitimacy of parental authority. For example, Smetana and Daddis (2002) demonstrated that parents' attempts to exercise control over ambiguously personal issues, such as friendships and peer affiliations (Smetana, 1995), are perceived as highly psychologically controlling and thus intrusive by adolescents. Friendships represent ambiguous personal issues, because adolescents regard them as falling under their personal jurisdiction, whereas parents consider them as subject to their authority. Thus parents may find it legitimate to exert control over these issues. However, because of its ambiguous character, parental intervention in adolescents' peer relations is likely to be perceived as intrusive. As suggested by self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 2000), individuals can respond to such intrusive and controlling instances by complying with the imposed rules and norms or by defying them and acting in a rebellious fashion. Research on parental psychological control and problem behaviors has shown that associations with externalizing problems, if any, are positive (Barber, 1996, Conger et al., 1997). Hence, intrusive parenting and parenting practices that are perceived as intrusive are more likely to be related to defiance of parental norms than to compliance.

We also expected that the association between prohibiting and group belongingness would be negative and that psychological control may mediate this negative association. This expectation is consistent with theories on the development of secure peer relationships and social competence (e.g., Ladd & Pettit, 2002), which suggest that whereas nurturant and supportive parenting strategies foster a sense of security in peer groups, intrusive and autonomy-inhibiting parenting strategies would inhibit group belongingness and social competence (Grolnick, 2003, Karavasilis et al., 2003, Nelson and Crick, 2002, Soenens et al., 2006).

In contrast to prohibiting, supporting refers to a more encouraging and understanding stance by parents that can be expected to be negatively related to affiliations with deviant friends and positively to a sense of group belongingness (Mounts, 2002, Tilton-Weaver and Galambos, 2003). At first sight, one might expect that supporting is inconsistent with a psychologically controlling rearing style. However, examination of the items intended to measure ‘supporting’ peer management strategies reveals an element of control. For instance, the item “my parents encourage me to do activities with kids they like” (Mounts, 2002) contains a supportive component (i.e., ‘encourage’) as well as a controlling, non-empathic component (‘kids they like’). Because the strategy of supporting contains both elements of support and control, it was expected that supporting would be unrelated to psychological control. As a consequence, the lack of a relationship between supporting and psychological control precludes the possibility that psychological control mediates the associations between supporting and the outcomes.

Previous research has found that guiding does not yield independent effects on deviant behavior and deviant peer affiliation beyond support and prohibiting (e.g., Mounts, 2001). It was expected, therefore, that guiding would not be directly related to the peer affiliation outcomes and, hence, that psychological control will not mediate associations between guiding and the outcomes. However, herein we suggest a different possibility, namely that psychological control would moderate associations between guiding and the peer affiliation outcomes. This possibility is outlined in greater detail in the next section.

The hypothesis that the effect of guiding on deviant and positive peer affiliation is moderated by psychological control is consistent with Darling and Steinberg's (1993) model, which posits that parenting style dimensions (such as psychological control) may alter the effectiveness of more specific parenting practices (such as peer management strategies) in producing desired child behavior outcomes. On the basis of this model, it can be expected that peer management strategies will be more positively related to affiliations with deviant peers and more negatively related to group belongingness with increasing levels of psychological control.

Such a hypothesis is also consistent with Grolnick's (2003) and Reeve, Deci, and Ryan's (2004) suggestion that the effect of a social context that provides structure and guidelines will depend on the way these structuring and guiding elements are brought about. Specifically, guidelines are more likely to be fully endorsed and followed up when they are provided in a non-controlling fashion. Because perceived parental control would interfere with the acceptance of parental guidance (as evidenced by the positive associations obtained between psychological control and externalizing problems; e.g., Barber, 1996), it would result in more rather than less deviant peer affiliation and deviant peer behavior. Similarly, to the extent that a particular parenting practice (such as guiding) would be experienced as controlling, one can expect that this parenting practice will relate to lower levels of group belongingness. As argued earlier, controlling and intrusive parenting most likely undermines feelings of security within friendships and peer relationships and may therefore undermine the effectiveness of peer management strategies (and guiding in particular) in fostering a sense of group belongingness.

Some evidence for the moderating role of parenting style in the relation between peer management strategies and adolescent behavior was obtained by Mounts (2002), who found that guiding was negatively related to drug use in authoritative families but positively related to drug use in uninvolved families. In general, however, the number of significant moderation effects in that study was relatively small and emerged primarily for guiding. The present research examined whether the effect of guiding would be moderated by one particular parenting dimension (i.e., psychological control) rather than by a constellation of parenting dimensions (i.e., authoritative parenting), and whether these effects would emerge for indices of both deviant peer involvement and positive group belongingness (see also Lansford et al., 2003).

This study was guided by three hypotheses. First, on the basis of past research (Mounts, 2001, Mounts, 2002, Tilton-Weaver and Galambos, 2003), we predicted that prohibiting would be positively related to affiliation with deviant peers and negatively related to a positive sense of group belongingness. We predicted that this relation would be mediated by perceived parental control. Second, we predicted the opposite pattern of relationships for the peer management strategy supporting. We did not expect the effects of this strategy to be mediated by perceived parental control, however. Third, we predicted that the relation between the peer management strategy of guiding and peer affiliation would be moderated by perceived parental control such that adolescents who feel that their parents provide guidance and structure in a controlling fashion may become more likely to affiliate with deviant friends.

In addition we explored age effects in the associations between peer management strategies, psychological control, and peer affiliation outcomes. Smetana (1995) has suggested that young people, especially during adolescence, increasingly view their friendships and peer relations as falling within their personal domain. As a result, adolescents may perceive their parents' intervention in the domain of friendships as increasingly illegitimate with increasing age so that associations between prohibiting and parental control and between prohibiting and affiliation with deviant friends may be more pronounced for older than for younger adolescents.