Internally and externally controlling parenting: relations with children's symptomatology and adjustment

“Controlling parenting and depression: 13 of 15 studies found a relationship between parental control and depression (Finkenauer et al., 2005; Mandara and Pikes, 2008; Soenens et al., 2012; Cui et al., 2014; Gargurevich and Soenens, 2016; Inguglia et al., 2016; Cai and Tu, 2020; Cho et al., 2020; Klein et al., 2020; Le…”

“Based on Levitt et al. (2020) and De Meyer et al. (2016), the Psychological Control scale was further divided into items tapping external control (e.g., “I insist that my child does exactly what he/she is told”) and internal control (e.g., “I tell my child if he/she loved me, he/she would do what I…”

“Additionally, research on parents' use of psychological control found love ‐ withdrawal was moderately associated with more depressive symptoms in children (Cheah et al., 2019; Levitt et al., 2020; Romm et al., 2020).”

“More specifically, in line with extensive research about internally and externally controlling parenting (Soenens & Vansteenkiste, 2010; Levitt et al. 2020), we expected to find at least two profiles that are mainly characterized by internal and external controlling behavior, respectively, with…”

“For example, in a study of parenting, neighborhood safety, and children ’ s sympto-matology (e.g., Levitt et al., 2020b), the less safe mothers perceived their neighborhood to be, the more controlling their children reported their parenting style to be.”

“For instance, parental guilt induction was found to positively relate to adolescents ’ internalizing problems (Levitt et al., 2020; Rakow et al., 2009), and the same was true for love withdrawal, which, along with guilt induction, longitudinally predicted early adolescents ’ increased internalizing…”

“…or alternatively, adolescents displaying higher internalizing and externalizing problem behaviors may have a biased cognitive style so they may be more likely to view their parent’s behaviors as highly controlling (see Levitt et al., 2020) and interpret these behaviors more negatively.”

“…(Grolnick et al., 2014), and di ff erent ways of controlling behavior, or, more precisely from the SDT perspective, di ff erences in how mothers exercised authority, led to di ff erences in the autonomous self-regulation and emotional state of the child (Levitt, Grolnick, Caruso, & Lerner, 2020).”

“Finally, in a diverse sample of early adolescents (Grades 5–6), parental love withdrawal was positively related to internalizing and externalizing symptoms and negatively associated with attachment security [2].”