Teen Behavior Problems Associated With Parent-Teen Discrepancies On Parenting Style, Says New Study

A parent's and teen's differences in views about parenting may affect teen problem behaviors, a latest study finds out. Researchers discovered that when teenagers viewed the parenting strategies of their parents more undesirably than their parents did, they displayed higher levels of hostile behaviors. The study is led by Lara Dimier, psychology graduate student from University of California, Riverside and Misaki Natsuaki, a psychology professor in the University of California, Riverside.

For the study, researchers used the data gathered from 220 families to examine parent-teenager differences in perceptions about how parents handle the challenging behaviors of their teens. After thorough examination, they found out that the parent-teenager discrepancies on how parents deal with their teens' challenging behaviors affect teen problem behaviors, showing more raised levels of challenging behaviors among teens like aggression.

Natsuaki stated that most, if not all, parents agree that they and their teens hold different perceptions about how parenting is going at home. She added that in some cases, teenagers view parenting to be stricter than how their parents really mean to, while in other cases, teenagers view parenting to be a lot tolerant than how parents mean to. With the latest study, it has become clear that the parent-teen perceptions of how parents cope with the difficult behaviors of their youths were uniquely relevant in calculating teen problem behaviors.

The effect of the differences in views of parents and teenagers about parenting behaviors was beyond and above how badly the parent and teen each felt regarding the parenting, Natsuaki noted according to Eurek Alert. Thus, according to the authors of the study, the family's nuanced characteristics like as who holds more bad views than whom as well as how much the discrepancies in perceptions exists in the relationship, contribute to the problem behaviors of the teenagers.

This study also points out the significance of teens' evaluation on how fathers and mothers deal with their teens' difficult behaviors. The study found out that a relationship between a father and teen is a can worsen or stop the problem behavior of teens, including aggression.

The researchers named the study, "Parenting Effects are in the Eye of the Beholder: Parent-Adolescent Differences in Perceptions Affects Adolescent Problem Behaviors." It is published in Journal of Youth and Adolescence.