Maternal autonomy support in adolescence
Here, we look at two studies of autonomy support in adolescence. First, Ratelle, Plamondon, Litalien & Duchesne (2024) published “Developmental Trajectories of Mother–Adolescent Agreement on Maternal Autonomy Support and Their Contributions to Adolescents’ Adjustment” in Journal of Family Psychology. Here’s the edited abstract:
Based on a multi-informant, longitudinal perspective on parent–adolescent relationships, this study examined patterns of convergence and divergence on maternal autonomy support. It had two aims: First, it sought to identify developmental trajectories of maternal autonomy support across adolescence from the perspectives of both mothers and adolescents. A second was to evaluate the longitudinal relation between self-reported and perceived maternal autonomy support by combining informants’ trajectories. Data come from two 5-year longitudinal multi-informant studies (NS1 = 687 mother–child dyads; NS2 = 745 mother–child dyads). Each year, mothers and adolescents completed a questionnaire assessing maternal autonomy support. In both the samples, results of growth mixture modeling showed from mothers’ perspective the presence of two distinct trajectories: high (91% of the sample) and moderate and relatively stable (9%) trajectories. From the adolescents’ perspective, three trajectories were identified: high and relatively stable (75.7%), high and decreasing (11.8%), and moderate and increasing (12.5%). The normative mother–adolescent convergence pattern was one in which both adolescents and their mother reporting high levels of autonomy support. It was generally associated with more positive indices of adjustment, although academic achievement was highest when adolescents reported comparatively more autonomy support than their mother. The worst mother–adolescent convergence pattern tended to be one in which both reported initially moderate levels of autonomy support that remained relatively stable for mothers and increased for youths. Implications for parenting research and interventions are discussed.
The finding that high maternal autonomy support correlates with adjustment is not at all surprising. The finding that academic achievement was highest when girls reported more autonomy support than their mothers may mean that girls thrive academically when their mothers are more effective at hiding some of their reservations about how much autonomy support to give. It’s also clear that mothers’ hesitation about autonomy support has negative impacts. The next study highlights why autonomy support matters and provides substantial background information. Van der Kaap-Deeder, Bülow, Waterschoot, Truly & Keijsers (2023) published “A Moment of Autonomy Support Brightens Adolescents' Mood: Autonomy support, psychological control and adolescent affect in everyday life” in Child Development. Here’s a highly edited summary:
This experience sampling study examined whether autonomy-supportive and psychologically controlling interactions with parents are intertwined with adolescents' momentary affect. For 7 days (in 2020), 143 adolescents (Mage = 15.82; SDage = 1.75; 64% girls; 95% European, 1% African, 3% unknown) reported 5 or 6 times a day how they felt and how interactions with parents were experienced. Preregistered dynamic structural equation models on 1439 (including 532 adjacent) parent–adolescent interactions revealed significant within-family associations: Adolescents experienced more positive affect during and following autonomy-supportive interactions, and vice versa. Adolescents felt more negative affect during and 3 h before psychologically controlling interactions. Between-family associations showed significant linkages between parenting and affect. These findings show that a moment of autonomy support can alter adolescents' everyday well-being.
Parental autonomy support is an important ingredient for optimal development in children, whereas the employment of psychological control by parents is detrimental for children's functioning. Much of what we know, however, comes from population wide studies that compare how families differ from each other in terms of their overall parenting practices.
Within families, parenting is a dynamic process. For instance, the extent to which parents are autonomy-supportive or psychologically controlling may be situationally determined. Rather than being “carved in stone” or a stable trait of a parent, research increasingly demonstrates that parenting is characterized by meaningful fluctuations across days. These within-person fluctuations in parenting across days might reciprocally relate to adolescents' functioning. Additionally, these transactional micro-processes of parenting as they occur within families in their everyday lives may be important building blocks for understanding the emergence of developmental changes in relationships, and in adolescent outcomes.
When providing autonomy support, parents acknowledge the child's perspective and needs, show an authentic interest in the child's inner world, provide choice whenever possible, and offer a rationale when choice is restricted. Such autonomy-supportive parenting practices not only enhance children's feelings of choice and volition, but also their sense of relatedness and competence. By doing so, children who experience more autonomy support than their peers score higher on a broad set of beneficial outcomes such as executive functioning, socio-emotional development, rule internalization, and academic autonomous motivation and effort.
Autonomy support is often contrasted with psychological control, referring to a set of intrusive parenting strategies in which children are pressured to behave, feel, or think in certain ways. Parental psychological control is, for instance, apparent when parents employ guilt- or shame-induction, or conditional regard (i.e., attention or love being dependent on the child's actions) toward their child. A vast amount of research has shown the detrimental outcomes of parental psychological control, such as externalizing and internalizing problems, problematic social functioning, and poor academic performance and motivation, often through children's feelings of pressure, rejection or social isolation, or incompetence.
By employing 1439 parent–adolescent interactions and preregistered DSEMs, this study supported the premise that parenting is situationally determined. At moments when parents were perceived to be more autonomy supportive and less psychologically controlling, adolescents' feelings were more positive and less negative. Moreover, autonomy-supportive parenting predicted increased adolescents' positive affect 3 h later above and beyond the carry-over stability of positive affect, suggesting that these positive parenting effects may linger. Adolescent agency was also visible. Adolescent positive affect predicted more autonomy-supportive parenting in the next interaction, and adolescents' negative affect predicted subsequently more psychologically controlling parenting.
Our results showed that adolescents experienced more positive affect at moments when their parents were perceived to be higher in autonomy support in line with previous diary studies employing both parent-reports and child-reports of parenting. That is, parents' autonomy support not only related to a higher level of positive affect 3 h later, but experiencing more positive affect also predicted more autonomy support the next moment.
This insight indicating that autonomy-supportive parenting has a rather immediate effect can be employed to foster positive parenting practices and to create a virtuous circle of positive interactions within families. Specifically, enhancing autonomy-supportive practices in concrete situations can fuel children's positive affect that, in turn, fosters parents' employment of autonomy support.
The effect of autonomy support may be limited to positive affective well-being. In contrast to our hypothesis, we found parental autonomy support and adolescents' negative affect to be unrelated at the within-family level. This is partly in line with previous diary studies showing parental autonomy support to be related to concurrent child negative affect. Our finding can be understood from the dual pathway perspective with autonomy support being especially predictive of beneficial outcomes (such as positive affect; bright pathway) and not or to a lesser degree of detrimental outcomes. The current finding showing autonomy support to enhance children's positive feelings at the very moment but also 3 h later is therefore in line with this theoretical perspective and previous empirical findings mostly examining between-family differences.
Adolescents in families characterized by more psychological control experienced overall less positive affect and more negative affect. However, looking at the micro-dynamics within families, the conclusion that psychological control may lead to decreased adolescent well-being in families seems to be premature.
In their everyday lives, psychological control was unrelated to adolescents' positive affect, but did show a positive relation with concurrent negative affect. Even though adolescents experienced more negative affect at moments when their parents were more controlling, adolescents' perceptions of parental psychological control did not predict subsequent changes in their negative affect, with one exception. That is, the sensitivity analyses showed a negative relation between psychological control and negative affect 6 (but not 3) hours later.
Through examining this process as a transactional phenomenon by disentangling the direction of effects, we additionally found that adolescents' own negative affect related to increased psychological control 3 h later (not vice versa). Rather than being affected by their parents, adolescents, as such, can be seen as active agents. Adolescent negative affect may elicit more (perceived) psychological control later that day. This insight is in line with previous research showing, for instance, children's frustration and fearfulness to prompt more negative parenting behaviors. Perhaps different mechanisms come into play depending on the time interval, with child negative affect eliciting more psychological control in the short-term (immediate reaction of the parent) but less in the longer term (when parents were able to reflect more on their parenting practices).
Nonetheless, the extent to which parents really change their behaviors, or whether children perceive them differently, is an open question. Indeed, another explanation for our finding is that adolescents, due to the experience of negative affect, appraise parents' behavior as more controlling. Such reasoning is in line with the mood-congruity bias stating that children might perceive their social world more negatively when they are in a negative mood.
This first study on moment-to-moment relations between two key parental practices (i.e., autonomy support and psychological control) and adolescents' affect showed that (a) autonomy support and psychological control are situation-specific and vary within a family from one interaction to the next; (b) autonomy support and psychological control are linked to adolescents' affect at the within-family level indicating that effects on adolescent well-being are already observable within just a few hours; (c) children's affect also predicts subsequent changes in parental autonomy support and psychological control (or the perception thereof); and (d) autonomy support and psychological control function also within families via two separate pathways. Overall, this micro-level study demonstrates that just a moment of autonomy support can already brighten adolescents' mood.
I found this article helpful in highlighting the positive impact of parental autonomy support but also in noting that, when adolescents perceive negative affect, they may attribute more controlling behavior to their parents.