Parenting, Mental Health and Culture: A Fifth Cross-Cultural Research on Parenting and Psychological Adjustment of Children

We examined psychological disorders across cultures and their associations with parental factors (control, inconsistency, and rejection). A questionnaire assessing psychological disorders was administered to male and female adolescents in nine countries. The results showed that psychological disorders differ across cultures. Parental factors are associated with each other and have a great deal of shared variance. The associations between psychological disorders and all parental factors were examined together in one regression and significant associations were found with maternal control, paternal temporal inconsistency, maternal situational inconsistency, paternal rejection and maternal rejection. Parental rejection appears to be a robust and influential factor influencing adolescents’ psychological disorders. The total variance of psychological disorders explained by all the parenting factors was low. The results revealed the flaws of reductionism in research and highlight the importance of studying associations of psychological disorders with various parental factors simultaneously and in conjunction with other familial, social and genetic factors.