Parental autonomy support and parental psychological control perceptions: a study with Spanish school-aged children

ABSTRACT

Objective

The present study examined the antecedents and consequences of perceived parental autonomy support and psychological control. More specifically, we had three aims: a) to investigate the associations between parents’ expectations and beliefs about parenting and perceived parental autonomy support and psychological control; b) to analyse the relationships between the perceived parenting strategies (autonomy support and psychological control) and children’s outcomes: prosocial competence, emotional stability, and verbal and physical aggression and c) to test differences based on parents’ and children’s gender.

Method

The participants comprised 2,396 parents from Spain (1,164 fathers and 1,232 mothers) with diverse levels of qualification, professional and civil status and 1,325 children (637 boys and 685 girls) aged between 7 and 13 years old.

Results

Perceive parental autonomy support was positively correlated with children’s prosocial behaviour and competence: being more likely to engage in behaviours to achieve other people’s improvement or well – being. In contrast, perceived parental psychological control was positively correlated with emotional instability, and physical and emotional aggression, that is children will be more likely to develop emotional adjustment problems. Besides, we found a positive association between some negative parenting beliefs and perceived parental psychological control, and we found positive association between some positive parenting beliefs and perceived parental autonomy support. Women scoring significantly higher than men in all associations between parenting beliefs and perceived parenting autonomy support and psychological control. No relationship was found between parental separation anxiety and perceived parental autonomy support or control.

Conclusions

The results confirmed the importance of the role of parenting practices defined by SDT in children’s development.

KEY POINTS

What is already known about this topic:

• (1) Previous findings demonstrate how some parents’ beliefs about parenting are associated with perceived maternal and paternal autonomy support and psychological control.

• (2) Previous findings analysed the association between parental autonomy support and psychological control and children’s outcomes.

• (3) Previous findings found some results about the influence of parents’ gender on the associations between the variables studied.

What this topic adds:

• (1) Our study contributes to the advancement of knowledge because it took place in a little-studied context, Spain, and therefore contributes to the cross-cultural study of SDT.

• (2) Our study tests the relative contribution of parenting dimensions in elementary- school aged children and few studies have been exclusively done with this age group.

• (3) Our study used a multi-informant approach because parents and children, simultaneously, were asked about parental dimensions. Besides, we used a very large sample.

KEYWORDS:

• Self-determination theory
• parental autonomy support, parental psychological control
• parenting beliefs, children’s outcomes
• gender

Acknowledgements

We appreciate the support of the statistical consulting unit of the University of Oviedo.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities [MCIU-19-PGC2018-095462-B-100]; Ministry of Universities FPU 2021 [MU-22-FPU21/00250].