Emotional autonomy, psychosocial adjustment and parenting: interactions, moderating and mediating effects

Following inconsistent results on the developmental outcomes of emotional a utonomy, this study examined the consequences of emotional and behavioural autonomy for different aspects of psychosocial adjustment in the context of the parenting process as perceived by the adolescent. Measures of emotiona l autonomy, behavioural autonomy, perceived parenting and various aspects o f psychosocial adjustment were completed by a sample of 558 adolescent boys and girls (aged 12-17 years) from the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium. A co ntinuous measure of authoritativeness was constructed for this study. Corre lations revealed that authoritativeness was associated with a positive patt ern of adjustment, while autonomy was associated with a negative pattern of adjustment, except for self-reliance. Analyses indicated that authoritativ eness and autonomy did not interact to produce mean differences in adjustme nt. Further, hierarchical multiple regression analyses showed that it was o nly for self-reliance that the interaction between emotional autonomy and a uthoritativeness explained significantly more variance than a model that co mprised only the main effects. Finally, path analysis clarified the differe nce between emotional and behavioural autonomy, in that emotional autonomy predicted only higher levels of internal distress, while behavioural autono my predicted only lower school grades and higher levels of deviant behaviou r, at least when authoritativeness was partialled out. These results reveal that it is useful to study autonomy and its developmental outcomes in the broader family context, but they also reveal the limitations of such an app roach. (C) 1999 The Association for Professionals in Sen ices for Adolescen ts.