Parental attachment and identity styles among adolescents: moderating role of gender

The study was aimed to explore the relationship between parental attachment and identity styles among adolescents. Furthermore, gender differences were also investigated for both constructs. The study was done in two phases. The first, try-out phase was aimed to explore language and cultural appropriateness of the Identity Styles Inventory-4 (Berzonsky et al., 2011) and Parental Attachment Questionnaire (Kenny, 1987). The second phase of the study was designed to fulfill the research objectives. The try-out phase indicated that instruments were culturally and linguistically appropriate. The main study was carried out with a sample of 252 adolescents. The results showed that instruments were internally consistent and reliable. The results yielded that parental attachment was positively related with informational style, normative style, and commitment but was negatively correlated with diffuse-avoidant style. For gender differences, girls scored higher on parental attachment as compared to boys. For identity styles, girls scored higher as compared to boys on informational, normative, and diffuse-avoidant style but for commitment differences were nonsignificant When moderating role of gender was explored, significant moderation was seen only for emotional support to informational style link where boys were more inclined to share to show the trend. Keywords: parental attachment, normative identity styles, informative identity style, diffuse-avoidant style, commitment, adolescents