The Role of Mothers' Use of Control in Children's Perfectionism: Implications for the Development of Children's Depressive Symptoms

Abstract

The central aim of this research was to investigate the possibility that when parents use heightened control with children, children develop perfectionistic concerns, which may foster depressive symptoms. Mothers' use of control with their elementary school children (N=104) was observed in the laboratory along with their affective expression toward their children; children's behavior (e.g., task engagement) that might influence mothers' use of control was also observed. Self-oriented and socially prescribed perfectionism and depression were assessed in children through self-report. Mothers using heightened control had children with perfectionistic concerns, particularly socially prescribed ones. This was not due to mothers' affective expression or children's behavior. Children's socially prescribed perfectionism mediated the link between mothers' use of heightened control and children's heightened depressive symptoms.

Big Five Personality Factors, Perceived Parenting Styles, and Perfectionism among Academically Gifted Students

“…Findings of the second regression analysis indicated that negative perfectionism as measured by concern over mistakes, high parental expectations, parental criticism, and doubting of actions subscales was predicted by maternal authoritarian style, neuroticism, and paternal authoritarian style. This findings support previous studies that found correlation between positive perfectionism and authoritative parenting style, openness to experience, and conscientiousness; and correlation between negative perfectionism and authoritarian parenting style and neuroticism (Besharat et al, 2011;Biran & Reese, 2007;Kenney-Benson & Pomerantz, 2005;Rudasill, Adelson, Callahan, Houlihan, & Keizer, 2013). However, the result of this study showed that academically gifted students have different perceptions towards their parents; where maternal parenting style contributes 49.3% to the development of negative perfectionism and paternal parenting style contribute 44.3% to the development of positive perfectionism.…”

“…Researchers abroad have demonstrated the association between parenting styles and perfectionist tendencies in children (Besharat et al, 2011;Biran & Reese, 2007;Flett & Hewitt, 2002;Kenney-Benson & Pomerantz, 2005). Studies found that there were positive correlations between authoritarian parenting style and negative perfectionism, and also between authoritative parenting style and positive perfectionism (SpeirsNeumeister, 2004).…”

The Scars of the Inner Critic: Perfectionism and Nonsuicidal Self‐Injury in Eating Disorders

“…Nevertheless, our findings are in line with the idea that parental criticism carries over into NSSI in ED patients through ECP. Past research had identified associations between critical parenting and ECP (McCranie & Bass, 1984) and between critical parenting and psychopathology in children and adolescents (Kenney-Benson & Pomerantz, 2005). Our study was among the first to demonstrate the mediating role of ECP between parental criticism and NSSI.…”

“…Further, a number of studies have shown that ECP plays a mediating role in associations between harsh/critical parenting and psychopathology in children and adolescents (Kenney-Benson & Pomerantz, 2005). Similar evidence for this sequence of mediation in the domain of NSSI, however, is inconsistent.…”

“…Mediation analyses were performed for ECP only. In line with the previous studies (Kenney -Benson & Pomerantz, 2005;Soenens, Luyckx, et al, 2008), scores for ECP were adjusted for PSP. This procedure is thought to result in a more pure assessment of the core features of ECP (Stoeber & Otto, 2006).…”