Parenting and Adolescent's Psychological Adjustment: Toward a Systemic Approach in Parenting Research

Abstract

This article's objectives are twofold: (a) to disclose the possible distortion of the associations found in the reductionist research that prevails in many areas, in order to ensure greater caution and better understanding of such research. (b) To study the associations between family and parental factors and adolescent psychological disorders (PD) according to a systemic model that analyses eight familial factors and eleven parental factors in addition to two nominal ones: culture and the adolescents' sex. The study is based on a data collected from nine countries (1358 male and 1526 female adolescents), regarding two categories of family factors (socio-economic and connectedness) and three categories of parenting factors (control, inconsistency, and rejection) and adolescent psychological disorders (PD). To compare different levels of reductionism, four analyses of the same data were carried out, ranging from an analysis of the associations between each factor and adolescent PD (reductionist), to analysis of the associations between all the factors taken together (systemic) and adolescent PD. In addition, the systemic analysis was carried out among different groups of adolescents according to two nominal variables: culture (western and eastern) and the adolescents' sex (male female). Our results show that in a reductionist analysis most of the family and parental factors have significant associations with adolescents PD, and altogether explain 37.2% of adolescents' PD. Most of these associations were diminished or changed in the systemic analysis and explained only 13.5% of the PD variance. The associations of the more systemic analysis changed again when two nominal factors (culture and sex) were taken into consideration. These findings indicate that reductionist analyses may lead to illusionary associations and that mixed results are an inevitable or even inherent byproduct of reductionist research.Keywords: Parenting, adolescents, culture, collectivism, systemic.Phenomena take place in nature and society through interactions between variables that constitute a dynamic system. In order to study a phenomenon, researchers define variables relevant to the phenomenon and develop instruments to measure these variables. Most of the studies in social science and medicine tend to be reductionist; they deal with only a few relevant variables at a time and exclude many other relevant variables. Therefore these fields of research are flooded with mixed or inconsistent results. For example, studies examining the influence of personality factors on health [1], of thinking on pain [2], debriefing on persons exposed to traumas [3,4], viewing of violent films on violent behavior [5][6][7], and emotional expression on blood pressure [8] arrived at mixed and inconsistent outcomes. SYSTEMIC EXPLANATION FOR THE INCONSISTENT RESULTSInconsistent results are usually attributed to differences in methodology, such as differences in the samples, tools, and data analysis. This explanation ignores a more crucial attribution-t...

Parenting Profiles versus Parenting Factors and Adolescents’ Psychological Disorders

“…(For more about the flaws of reductionism, see Dwairy, November 2006). In a systemic study of parenting, Dwairy (2009) showed that in a reductionist analysis that treats each factor separately, most parental factors have significant associations with adolescents' psychological disorders and, taken together, explain 37.2% of adolescents' disorders. Most of these associations were diminished or modified in a systemic analysis that bundled all the factors together in one regression; in this case the same factors were found, collectively, to explain only 13.5% of the variance in psychological disorders.…”

“…This 15 items version of PSS was used by the primary author in many previous studies (Dwairy, 2007(Dwairy, , 2009. To validate the scale on the present sample, a principal factor analysis was conducted on the fifteen PSS items with a varimax rotation and a .20 loading criterion.…”

Perceived Family and School Rejection and Adolescents’ Psychological States

“…In such reductionist studies, the shared variances between the circuits are overlooked, and thus produce false and unreal associations between acceptance-rejection and psychological states. This situation reinforces the need for a systemic approach in research related to parenting, already highlighted in former articles by the author (Dwairy, 2009a(Dwairy, , 2009b. Since in real life many factors interact and generate a specific phenomenon, and the associations between two factors is dependent on the presence or absence of many other related factors, the more factors are included in one analysis, the more valid are the associations found.…”

“…These circuits are continuous, dynamic, multi-directional, and related to the quality and characteristics of each of the parties. Therefore, and consistently with my systemic research approach (Dwairy, 2006(Dwairy, , 2009a(Dwairy, , 2009b, it is crucial to study these associations together. A few studies have explored the relationship between these circuits, such as the impact of teachers and parents (Rohner, 2010, Tulviste, andRohner, 2010) or parents and siblings (Rohner, et al submitted).…”

Effectiveness of a Group Counseling Program in Transcendental Meditation in Improving the Level of General Psychological Adjustment for Grade Eleven Female Studentsin Muscat Governorate

“…Dwairy [18] Al-Atawi [19] conducted a study that aimed to design a cognitive behavioural counseling program in order to enhance the level of psychological social adjustment and reduce the desire to drop out from school among secondary school students in the Tabook region, through applying CBT counseling techniques on the sample by using a semi-empirical method. The sample consisted of 30 students who were randomly chosen.…”