The Moderating Role of Best Friendships on the Longitudinal Relationship Between Parental Psychological Control and Internalizing Problems, Externalizing Problems, and Identity Exploration in Emerging Adulthood

• Main Author: Cook, Lauren Elizabeth
• Format: Others
• Published: BYU ScholarsArchive 2018
• Subjects: psychological control; best friends; identity; gender; Social and Behavioral Sciences
• Online Access: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/7454; https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=8454&context=etd

Parental psychological control has been linked to numerous negative outcomes among emerging-adult children. Given that emerging adulthood is a time for young people to become autonomous, explore their identities, and begin to feel like an adult, controlling parenting that limits these necessary developmental experiences can be particularly harmful to emerging adults. Given this vulnerability, the current study aimed to understand how parental psychological control affects emerging adults' adjustment (i.e., internalizing problems, externalizing problems, identity exploration), explore a moderating factor (i.e., best friendships) that could help these struggling emerging adults, and examine how these relations could differ by parent and child gender. Participants came from four universities across the United States and completed the READY questionnaire online at two time points, one year apart (N = 273, Mage = 20.95). Results revealed that maternal psychological control positively predicted identity exploration for males and best friendships moderated the relationship between parental psychological control and identity exploration for females. No significant results were found for internalizing and externalizing problems. I then discuss conceptual factors that may play a role in understanding the relation between parental psychological control, best friendships, emerging adult adjustment (i.e., internalizing problems, externalizing problems, identity exploration), and gender.