Raising Spanish Children With an Antisocial Tendency: Do We Know What the Optimal Parenting Style Is?

Abstract

Families can play an essential role in preventing violent and antisocial behaviors, which are considered a significant public health issue. However, some studies argue that most children are antisocial only during adolescence, and even teenagers can mimic antisocial behavior in ways that are normative and well-adjusted. This study analyzed patterns of competence and adjustment in young adults with and without an antisocial tendency during adolescence from authoritative (characterized by warmth and strictness), authoritarian (strictness but not warmth), indulgent (warmth but not strictness), and neglectful (neither warmth nor strictness) families. Emergent research has indicated that in a European context, the indulgent parenting style is optimal. Offspring’s competence and adjustment were captured through self-esteem (academic and family), psychosocial development (self-competence and empathy), and low emotional maladjustment (nervousness and hostility). Participants consisted of a community sample of 489 Spanish young adults, 191 men (39.1%) and 298 women (60.9%), aged 18 to 34 years old. The design was a 4 × 2 × 2 × 2 MANOVA (parenting style × antisocial tendency × sex × age). Analysis of main effects showed that youths with an antisocial tendency have less self-esteem and psychosocial development, but more emotional maladjustment. Regardless of the parenting style, an antisocial tendency during adolescence is consistently associated with worse adjustment in young adults. Both the authoritative and indulgent parenting styles are consistently associated with better outcomes (higher self-esteem and psychosocial development, and lower emotional maladjustment) than the authoritarian and neglectful parenting styles. However, there are interactions between the parenting style and the antisocial tendency. For young adults without an antisocial tendency, only indulgent parenting is associated with less emotional maladjustment. These results support the idea that in Europe the indulgent parenting style performs better than the authoritative style, but only when raising adolescents without an antisocial tendency. For young adults with an antisocial tendency, indulgent and authoritative parenting are equally optimal for all the studied outcomes.

Substance Use in Early and Middle Adolescence. The Role of Academic Efficacy and Parenting

“…Therefore, adolescents that live in a warm family environment with a commitment to parenting tend to be more prepared to cope with interactions with their immediate social environment and are less likely to consume substances (Mason et al, 2017). However, we may not conclude that this situation also occurs only with an indulgent parenting style, as other scholars have found (Calafat et al, 2014;Fuentes et al, 2015;García & Gracia, 2009García et al, 2018;Gracia et al, 2012).…”

“…Hypothesis 2: Parenting is related to adolescents' perceived academic self-efficacy. Given the results for Spanish populations (Calafat et al, 2014;Fuentes et al, 2015;Fuentes et al, 2011;García & Gracia, 2009García et al, 2018;Gracia et al, 2012), we expect authoritative and indulgent parenting to be positively related to perceived academic self-efficacy.…”

“…In this context, scholars have widely shown the positive influence of affect-and communication-based parenting -which fosters trust and two-way communication -on children's development (Crandall, Ghazarian, Day, & Riley, 2015;García & Gracia, 2009 and substance use prevention (Hinnant, Erath, Tu, & El-Sheikh, 2016;Hoffmann & Bahr, 2014;Jiménez, 2011;Mason, Russo, Chmelka, Herrenkohl, & Herrenkohl, 2017). Some researchers have shown that an indulgent parenting style (low imposition and high warmth) can have positive effects in horizontal-collectivist societies such as Southern European and Latin American societies, sometimes even exceeding the positive effects of a more authoritative parenting style (Fuentes, Alarcón, García, & Gracia, 2015;Fuentes, García, Gracia, & Lila, 2011;García & Gracia, 2009García, López-Fernández, & Serra, 2018;Gracia et al, 2012). In contrast, other scholars have observed a lack of rules with respect to substance use and permissiveness toward substance use in indulgent parenting, which increases the risk of substance use (Van Der Vorst et al, 2006;Varvil-Weld, Crowley, Turrisi, Greenberg, & Mallett, 2014).…”

Is School Adjustment Related to Environmental Empathy and Connectedness to Nature?

“…Univariate F-tests were conducted for all sources of variations when multivariate statistically significant differences reached the significant statistical level. Then, univariate significant results were followed by post hoc tests using the Bonferroni procedure to compare all possible pairs of means (García, López-Fernández, & Serra, 2018;Martínez, Murgui, García, & García, 2019).…”

Parenting Styles and Aggressive Adolescents: Relationships with Self-esteem and Personal Maladjustment

“…Aggressive behavior has been shown to be strongly linked to peers' social influences, broad social and contextual factors, cultural approval of violence, or even a genetic predisposition, although parents are among the strongest influences on the development of aggressiveness in young people (Garcia, Lopez-Fernandez, & Serra, 2018;Moffitt, 2018;Raine, 2002). Many parenting studies generally identify two main orthogonal (i.e., unrelated) dimensions (responsiveness and demandingness, also called warmth/acceptance/ involvement and strictness/imposition) and four parenting typologies (i.e., authoritative, indulgent, authoritarian, and neglectful).…”