Linking Parent-Adolescent Congruence in Perceived Parental Emotional Support to Adolescent Developmental Outcomes: The More, the Better?

Xiaofang Weng; Mengyu Miranda Gao; Huiting Cao; Zhuo Rachel Han

doi:10.1007/s10964-024-02081-9

Linking Parent-Adolescent Congruence in Perceived Parental Emotional Support to Adolescent Developmental Outcomes: The More, the Better?

J Youth Adolesc. 2024 Sep 19. doi: 10.1007/s10964-024-02081-9. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Xiaofang Weng¹, Mengyu Miranda Gao², Huiting Cao¹, Zhuo Rachel Han³

Affiliations

¹ Beijing Key Laboratory of Applied Experimental Psychology, National Demonstration Center for Experimental Psychology Education, Faculty of Psychology, Beijing Normal University. No. 19, XinJieKouWai Street, Beijing, China.
² Beijing Key Laboratory of Applied Experimental Psychology, National Demonstration Center for Experimental Psychology Education, Faculty of Psychology, Beijing Normal University. No. 19, XinJieKouWai Street, Beijing, China. [email protected].
³ Beijing Key Laboratory of Applied Experimental Psychology, National Demonstration Center for Experimental Psychology Education, Faculty of Psychology, Beijing Normal University. No. 19, XinJieKouWai Street, Beijing, China. [email protected].

PMID: 39298097
DOI: 10.1007/s10964-024-02081-9

Abstract

Parents and their children can have congruent or incongruent perceptions of parenting, which has been shown to have downstream effects on certain adolescent outcomes. However, little is known about whether such effect holds for various domains of developmental outcomes or across adolescent boys and girls. Investigating 2268 parent-girl (M_age = 15.73, SD_age = 0.29, 75.5% were mothers) and 2090 parent-boy (M_age = 15.75, SD_age = 0.29, 71.8% were mothers) dyads from Hong Kong, this study examined the associations between parent-adolescent (in)congruence and adolescent emotional symptoms, positive emotions, and academic performance. Polynomial regression and response surface analyses revealed that both congruence and incongruence were linked to emotional symptoms and positive emotions in varying patterns, but only congruence was tied to academic performance. Associations between (in)congruence and developmental outcomes generally were similar between boys and girls. These findings underscore the importance of decomposing (in)congruence effects in family processes and emphasizing the complexity of adolescent development.

Keywords: Academic performance; Emotional health; Gender effect; Parent-adolescent (in)congruence; Parental emotion support; Response surface analyses.