Parenting Styles and Aggressive Adolescents: Relationships with Self-esteem and Personal Maladjustment

Current emergent studies are seriously questioning if parental strictness contributes to adolescent adjustment. This study examined whether the relationship between authoritative (warmth and strictness), authoritarian (strictness without warmth), indulgent (warmth without strictness), and neglectful (neither warmth nor strictness) parenting styles shows equal or different pattern of adjustment and maladjustment for aggressive and non-aggressive adolescents. The sample consisted of 969 Spanish adolescents, 554 females (57.2%) and 415 males, ranging from 12 to 17 years old. Families were classified into one of four typologies by their scores on warmth and strictness, and the adolescents were grouped by their aggressiveness (low vs. high). Adolescent adjustment was captured with three self-esteem indicators (emotional, physical, and family) and personal maladjustment with five indicators (negative self-esteem, negative self-adequacy, emotional irresponsiveness, emotional instability, and negative worldview). It was tested main and interaction effects between parenting and aggressiveness considering also sex and age factors. Findings showed that aggressive adolescents always had the worst socialization outcomes (i.e., the lowest self-esteem and the highest personal maladjustment). Aggressive and non-aggressive adolescents have a common pattern: both, indulgent and authoritative parenting styles were always associated with better outcomes than either authoritarian or neglectful parenting, but indulgent parenting style was associated with the best outcomes across all the criteria. In contrast with previous evidence about the idea that parental strictness and imposition might be beneficial to raise aggressive adolescents, present findings highlight the positive impact of parental warmth even with aggressive adolescents. Implications for family interventions were considered.