Patterns of Competence and Adjustment among Adolescents from Authoritative, Authoritarian, Indulgent, and Neglectful Families

TLDR

The study aimed to test Maccoby and Martin’s revision of Baumrind’s parenting typology by classifying about 4,100 adolescents into authoritative, authoritarian, indulgent, or neglectful families based on acceptance/involvement and strictness/supervision. Researchers compared adolescents from these groups on psychosocial development, school achievement, internalized distress, and problem behavior. Results showed authoritative parents were associated with higher psychosocial competence and lower dysfunction, neglectful parents with the opposite, authoritarian parents with better obedience but poorer self‑conception, and indulgent parents with greater self‑confidence but increased substance abuse, misconduct, and lower school engagement, thereby supporting the framework and distinguishing two permissive family types.

Abstract

In order to test Maccoby and Martin's revision of Baumrind's conceptual framework, the families of approximately 4,100 14-18-year-olds were classified into 1 of 4 groups (authoritative, authoritarian, indulgent, or neglectful) on the basis of the adolescents' ratings of their parents on 2 dimensions: acceptance/involvement and strictness/supervision. The youngsters were then contrasted along 4 sets of outcomes: psychosocial development, school achievement, internalized distress, and problem behavior. Results indicate that adolescents who characterize their parents as authoritative score highest on measures of psychosocial competence and lowest on measures of psychological and behavioral dysfunction; the reverse is true for adolescents who describe their parents as neglectful. Adolescents whose parents are characterized as authoritarian score reasonably well on measures indexing obedience and conformity to the standards of adults but have relatively poorer self-conceptions than other youngsters. In contrast, adolescents from indulgent homes evidence a strong sense of self-confidence but report a higher frequency of substance abuse and school misconduct and are less engaged in school. The results provide support for Maccoby and Martin's framework and indicate the need to distinguish between two types of "permissive" families: those that are indulgent and those that are neglectful.