Mt Holyoke PSYCH 200 - Parenting Styles, Guilt, and College Adju

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Parenting Styles, Guilt, and College AdjustmentRobert Shilkret & Sara VecchiottiMount Holyoke CollegeABSTRACTCollege women completed measures of parenting style, guilt, and collegeadjustment. Results provided partial support for a model, derived fromcontrol-mastery theory (a cognitive psychoanalytic theory), relating the child’sinterpretations of parental behavior (development of guilt) to adultadjustment outcome. Subgroups of participants were also classified as havingauthoritative, authoritarian, permissive-indulgent, or permissive-neglectfulparents. Authoritative parenting was generally associated with good outcome(adjustment and guilt), while authoritarianism and neglectfulness wereassociated with poorer outcome. Indulgentness was equal toauthoritativeness on all adjustment variables except academic adjustment,where those with authoritative parents were better adjusted. Authoritativeparents were seen as more consistent in discipline than authoritarian andneglectful parents; but indulgent parents were seen to be as consistent asauthoritative ones.Despite the wealth of research in parenting style, there has been relativelylittle attention to adult outcomes, and less to processes of developmental influence(Darling & Steinberg, 1993). We didn’t investigate process of developmentalinfluence directly, but we did use a contemporary cognitive-psychoanalytic theory0. Weiss’s control-mastery theory, 1986) to propose that some parenting behaviorsare interpreted by the child to form pathogenic beliefs (forms of guilt), whichinfluence s&sequent adjustment (Shilkret & Nigrosh, 1997).;I,. CIWe also studied the relationship between parenting style, as perceived bycollege students, and their adjustment to the college environment, with theexpectation that authoritative parenting would be related to good adjustment andneglectful parenting to poor adjustment. Permissive parenting was differentiatedPoster presented at the Biennial Meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development(SRCDL Washington, DC., April, 1997. For further information, write Robert Shilkret,Department of Psychology, Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, MA 01075. We thankFrancine Deutsch for a statistical consultation.2into indulgent m neglectful styles (Maccoby & Martin, 1983); we expected thatindulgent permissiveness would not be as adverse in later adjustment asneglectful permissiveness. Further, we examined the hypothesis thatauthoritarianism would lead to good academic adjustment, while indulgent-permissiveness would lead to good personal and social adjustment (Lamborn,Mounts, Steinberg, & Dombush, 1991) in a college population.METHODThree measures were completed by 141 college women (18-20 years): (1)Parental Authority Questionnaire (Buri, 1991); this classifies parenting stylesas perceived by students by the Baumrind types (1971). We added items todiscriminate a 4th, permissive-neglectful style; (2) The Student Adaptation toCollege Questionnaire (SACQ, Baker & Siryk, 1989), which yields subscales forAcademic, Social, Personal/Emotional Adjustment, and Attachment (tocollege)/Goal Commitment; (3) The Interpersonal Guilt Questionnaire(O’Connor, et al., 1996), with subscales for Survival Guilt (guilt about one’saccomplishments), Separation Guilt (guilt about independence from familyand recognition of parents’ faults), Omnipotence Guilt (undue responsibilityfor others), and Self-Hate Guilt (about being worthy). We also asked about theconsistency of discipline. (Scales are illustrated in appendix.)FINDINGSCorrelations (for all 141 participants, see Table) showed thatAuthoritativeness was negatively associated with Survivor and Self-HateGuilt scores (as expected), but positively associated with Separation Guilt.Perhaps authoritative parenting, while protecting a child against guilt aboutsurpassing a parent and poor self-concept, ties the child to the parent morethan other styles. Authoritarianism, in contrast, was positively associatedwith all guilt measures except Separation Guilt. Our speculation, usingWeiss’s cognitive-psychoanalytic theory, is that the authoritarian parent isultimately perceived by the child as weak, even narcissistically vulnerable,leading to difficulties in surpassing the parent (for fear it will show up theparent), as well as to poor self-esteem. Indulgentness was associated only(negatively) with omnipotent responsibility (and the overall guilt measure),suggesting this style might protect the child from feeling excessivelyresponsible for others. Neglectfulness was associated with & SeparationGuilt, but h&& Self-Hate Guilt, suggesting little difficulty in achievingautonomy, in principle (perhaps a consequence of an avoidant attachment),but poor self-concept (and lower adjustment also, see below). Multipleregression analyses showed that neither Authoritarianism nor Indulgentnesspredicted adjustment independent of the overall guilt variable. For the othertwo parenting styles, both parenting style score and guilt predictedadjustment, independent of the other. That is, there was some support for themodel of guilt as a mediator between parenting style and college adjustmentoutcome.ANOVAs on the students with the 20 highest-scoring parent pairs ofeach of the 4 styles showed that authoritativeness yielded better adjustmentthan authoritarianism (and neglectfulness) on all adjustment variables (allresults at E c .05 or better). Children of indulgent parents were, as expected,significantly better than those of authoritarian parents in Personal/Emotionaladjustment. College students with indulgent parents were, in fact, as welladjusted as those of authoritative parents Socially and Personally/Emotionally; but not as well adjusted Academically. There was no evidencein this sample that authoritarianism would lead to better Academicadjustment than indulgentness. Authoritarianism was associated with scoresas low as neglectfulness in Social, Personal/Emotional, and Total adjustment.‘iNeglectfulness was lower than indulgentness in Social adjustment and TotalSACQ scores. In a rating of disciplinary consistency, authoritative parentswere seen as more consistent than authoritarian and neglectful parents; butindulgent parents were seen as consistent as authoritative ones.ANOVA’s for the guilt scales for this subgroup of participants weresimilar, with authoritativeness and indulgentness generally associated withlower guilt than the other two styles. Authoritarianism was associated withhigher levels


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