Maternal support and deviance among rural adolescents: The mediating role of self‐esteem

Abstract

Introduction: Supportive mothering buffers against adolescent deviance, but the precise mechanisms underlying this relationship are poorly understood. The current investigation tested the extent to which self-esteem mediated the maternal support-deviance link and whether it varied by adolescent age and sex.Methods: Data were collected from 911 middle and high school students in the rural South (53.6% female, Mage = 14.70 years). Main model tests were completed in SEM.Results: Results indicated that maternal support and self-esteem were positively associated and negatively to deviance, and that self-esteem mediated the support-deviance link. These associations did not differ by adolescent age. However, moderating effects by sex were significant, where maternal support had a greater effect on girls' self-esteem, while self-esteem had a greater effect on boys' deviance.Conclusions: Findings provide some evidence of how maternal support is associated with a positive self-concept that in turn decreases the likelihood of engaging in deviant behaviors.Juvenile courts in the United States handled an estimated 1,058,500 juvenile delinquency cases in 2013, which has more than doubled since 1960 (Hockenberry & Puzzanchera, 2015). Although the total number of juvenile delinquency cases has declined since 1985, delinquency caseloads involving drug offenses increased 83%, person offenses increased 51%, and public order crimes increased 40% (Hockenberry & Puzzanchera, 2015). Considering that official statistics do not include unreported delinquency, we can reasonably assume that the actual numbers are larger, indicating great challenges for improving adolescent development; thus, we need confront and understand which factors are associated with adolescent deviance. Among all factors, parenting accounts for the most variance in adolescent problem behaviors as compared to other explanatory variables (Hoskins, 2014). Meta-analytic and review studies have found significant links between parenting and adolescent deviance (Hoeve et al., 2009;Hoskins, 2014); more specifically, maternal parenting has been shown to have a greater influence on adolescent deviance than paternal parenting (Arbona & Power, 2003;Craig, 2016;Waizenhofer, Buchanan, & Jackson-Newsom, 2004). However, some aspects of the mothering-adolescent deviance link still require further study. For instance, does this link vary for boys versus girls (Hoeve et al., 2009), or does it change developmentally, across early versus middle adolescence? In addition, explanatory mechanisms underlying the link are rarely explored. Understanding the precise mechanisms underlying the mothering-deviance link will extend our knowledge on the specific underlying processes and will inform both clinical and prevention efforts.To fill in the above gaps in the literature, the following research goals were developed in the present study: to test how maternal parenting, specifically maternal support, was associated with adolescent deviance; to examine one possible underlying explanatory mechanis...

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