Sharyl Wee: Emerging Adults’ and Parents’ Perceptions of Supportive Parenting: Associations with Family and Parent-Child Relationship Quality

Parents' and children's reports of parenting are often incongruent, with parents reporting themselves more favorably. The extent to which these discrepancies in perceptions of parenting predict family relationship quality later in development has not been extensively studied. 79 emerging adults and their caregiver completed the Supportive and Unsupportive subscales of Coping with Children's Negative Emotions. EAs completed the Family Environment Scale and the Inventory of Parent and Peer Attachment Scale. Multiple regression models showed greater discrepancies between EAs' reports and parents' reports of parent' unsupportive responses predicted lower current family relationship quality b=-1.94,SE=0.76,p=.01. A main effect of EAs' perceptions of supportive parent responses to their negative emotions in childhood predicted higher levels of EA-reported parent-child relationship quality b=5.49,SE=1.52,p=.001. The results suggest that when EAs and parents agree that the parent was unsupportive of their child's negative emotions in childhood, EAs rated the family relationship quality as worst. Moreover, when EAs remembered their parents as responding supportively to their negative emotions in childhood, they rated their current relationship with their parents better. Results stress the implications of parents' and youths' perceptions of parenting on family relationship quality.