Delinquency as a consequence of parental warmth and self‐efficacy: Total sample and individual male and female mediation analyses

Abstract

Introduction: This study's purpose was to investigate the mediating effect of parental control selfeficacy on the parental warmth → child delinquency relationship in the mothers and fathers of early to mid-adolescent youth in a test of performance accomplishments as a prelude to parental self-eficacy. Methods: Parental warmth and control self-eficacy estimates, representing parental support and control, respectively, were provided by the mothers and fathers of 3934 (2010 boys, 1924 girls) youth from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC) and self-reported delinquency was obtained from the child. Results: As predicted, parental control self-eficacy mediated the relationship between parental warmth and child delinquency, whereas parental warmth did not mediate the relationship between parental self-eficacy and child delinquency. When analyses were performed separately for boys and girls, the father warmth → father self-eficacy → child delinquency pathway achieved the most consistent results in boys and the mother warmth → mother self-eficacy → child delinquency pathway achieved the only signiicant effect in girls. Conclusions: These results suggest that performance accomplishments, as characterized by a warm parent-child relationship, led to enhanced parental control self-eficacy, which, in turn, served to inhibit future delinquency in the child, thereby lending credence to a social cognitive learning theory interpretation of the parental support-control interface.Parental control and support have been found to predict reduced levels of future delinquent behavior in the offspring of these parents (Hoeve et al., 2009). The mechanism of effect, however, is uncertain and a matter of conjecture for researchers, clinicians, and policy makers. It is possible that positive parenting directly affects the child by buffering them from negative peer and neighborhood inluences or by teaching them basic social, coping, and problem-solving skills. A second possibility is that parenting exerts an indirect effect on the child by creating parental cognitions like parenting self-eficacy, that the child then models. Whereas the pathway running from positive parenting, to child self-eficacy, to child delinquency (Juang & Silbereisen, 1999;Olivari, Cucci, Bonanomi, Tagliabue, & Confalonieri, 2018;Walters, 2018) is well-documented, there may be more to this relationship than meets the eye. This is because there is no meaningful theoretical rationale upon which to base the argument that positive parenting leads directly to child self-eficacy. The two most prominent sources of self-eficacy are modeling and performance accomplishments (Bandura, 1986). One or both may be capable of clarifying the a path (positive parenting to child self-eficacy) of the positive parenting → child self-eficacy

“A Two-Edged Sword”: Paternalistic Leadership and Nurses Performance: A Moderated Mediation Model

“…Subsequently, it shows a way for the administration that how to oversee staff well. The outcomes are likewise an augmentation of Walters (2021) , who inferred the idea that for positive execution levels, self-efficacy is significant.…”

Parental efficacy after a military parenting program: A dyadic latent growth model

“…Utilizing a sample from Hong Kong, Kwok and Li (2015) found that spousal capital (i.e., marital satisfaction, parenting alliance, and spousal support) indirectly improved the father's involvement in parenting via parental efficacy. In a study including both parents, Walters (2021) found gender‐matching in which fathers' warmth and self‐efficacy were more important for boys' delinquency and mothers' warmth and self‐efficacy were more important for girls. However, less is known about the relationship between partners' parental efficacy over time, and the influence that parenting interventions have on long‐term change in parental efficacy.…”