NCJ Number
218349
Journal
Journal of Adolescence Volume: 30 Issue: 2 Dated: April 2007 Pages: 297-311
Date Published
April 2007
Length
15 pages
Annotation
This paper examined the relationship between parenting practices, adolescents’ agreement with parents, and adolescents’ beliefs about parental authority with adolescents’ conformity to parental standards.
Abstract
Results indicate that, in this Chilean sample, there is considerable variability both in how obedient different adolescents are and how obedient the same adolescent is across different issues. Almost all adolescents reported disobeying at least some of the time. Consistent with past research on parenting, adolescents’ reports of parental monitoring predicted between-adolescent differences in reported obedience, controlling for age and gender. Adolescents were more likely to report obeying their parents with regards to issues that they said parents had established clear rules about and parents reported enforcing strictly. Adolescents’ agreement with parents and their beliefs about parental authority and obedience were stronger predictors of both between- and within- adolescent reported obedience. These results suggest that adolescents’ internal standards of behaviors and their beliefs about parental authority and their own obligation to obey are important determinants of the extent to which they conform to parental standards. When parents set rules about issues that adolescents confront when their parents are not there, their decisions to conform to those rules may be partly determined by their own internal standards of behaviors and by their beliefs about their parents’ authority. This study used Chilean adolescents’ agreement with parental standards and beliefs about the legitimacy of parental authority and their own obligation to obey to predict adolescents’ obedience. Tables, references