Maternal control and adolescent depression: Ethnic differences among clinically referred girls

The relationship between perceived maternal control and depression was exam ined in I I I urban adolescent girls seeking psychological services at an o utpatient mental health center in the Midwest. This study sought to clarify inconsistent findings in earlier research linking parental control and ado lescent depression by examining urban girls with mental health problems and by testing ethnic background as a moderator of the general relationship. D ata were collected using self-administered questionnaires of adolescent gir ls' depressive symptoms, and perceptions of their mothers' parenting styles . Analyses did nor detect a significant association between maternal contro l and depression in the combined sample of adolescent girls; however, findi ngs were moderated by the ethnicity of the girls. Once ethnicity was includ ed. no relation between control and depression was found for Caucasian and Latina girls, bur high control was linked to less depression among African American girls. These findings highlight the importance of ethnicity and ge nder in child rearing and adolescent depression and stress the need for mor e culturally sensitive conceptualizations of depression.