| Summary: | The findings of the research into the perceived parental behavior provide contrasting data as to the existence and the nature of differences in the perception of parental behavior based on parents’ gender and respondents’ gender. The purpose of the present study is to examine the differences in the perceived parental behavior in adolescents with regard to parents’ gender and respondents’ age and gender. The study included 466 respondents (262 girls and 204 boys), in middle to late adolescence, divided into four sub-groups according to their age. The respondents were asked to fill in the Parental Bonding Instrument (PBI) questionnaire which measures the care and overprotection in mothers and fathers respectively. The obtained findings show the existence of significant difference based on the parents’ gender for both subscales: both maternal care and maternal overprotection were estimated as higher. Observing the differences by respondents’ gender on the whole sample, only one significant difference is found: paternal overprotection was estimated as higher by girls. The differences by age as observed within gender groups are completely disparate for girl and boy groups. The best insight into the differences is obtained through analysis by gender, for groups relatively homogenous in terms of their age (for the first three groups the only significant difference appears in the paternal overprotection subscale; the difference disappears in the subgroup of the oldest respondents’, while the differences between the perception of maternal and paternal care are of significance here). One particularly important finding for future research into rearing behavior is the fact that the perception of parental behavior changes over the period of adolescence differently for boys and girls; therefore, the analysis including perceived parental behavior should be performed for subgroups by gender, which are as homogenous as possible in terms of their age.
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