During adolescence, individuals are likely to try to test their limits and this tends to push them to engage in some risky behaviour (e.g. alcohol consumption, cigarettes or drugs use, driving unsafely, getting into fight…). Parents could be worried about their children’s sake and could want to prevent them from any risks or dangerous behaviour but also from exhibiting some negative conducts as externalizing and internalizing behaviour. The first corresponds to a problematic behaviour that is evident in children’s outward conducts (e.g. rule-breaking actions, substances abuse, violence, delinquency). The second refers to inner-directed and overcontrolled behaviour (e.g. depression, social withdrawal,…). To prevent these conducts, parents can sometimes settle some preventive practices. The terms parental ‘behavioural control’ and parental ‘psychological control’ are used to describe such parenting conducts and styles.
Behavioural control aims to regulate children’s behaviour to be conform to family or social norms and involves clear and consistent rules and supervision of conducts. Psychological control, for its part, refers to parental control of the adolescent’s psychological world, in which parents are, usually, non-responsive to the youngster’s psychological and emotional needs. By keeping the child emotionally dependent (e.g., love withdrawal, devaluation, guilt induction), parents manipulate adolescents’ emotional and psychological experiences and expression.
Symeou and Georgiou’s study gives an understanding of how certain parental factors may impact the development of externalizing and internalizing behaviour. Theses parental factors are distinguished in two categories : behavioural control and psychological control on adolescents’ conducts. 538 adolescents and their mothers and fathers (513 mothers and 464 fathers) completed quantitative measures. Adolescents completed the Children’s Report on Parent Behaviour Inventory (CRPBI) and their parents completed the Child Behaviour Checklist Parent Report (Short Form; CBCL). Results of the study showed that only parents’ psychological control predicted externalizing and internalizing behaviour : the more the mother or the father use psychological control, the more the adolescent exhibits externalizing and internalizing behaviour. These conducts are not predicted by behavioural control.
Theses phenomena can be explained by the fact that mothers tend to receive more confidences on behalf of the teenagers than the fathers. Consequently, they have more means to act on the child’s psychological world and to use his weakness to control his conducts. It can also be assumed that their practices affect more the teenagers because of their closeness. The father, as for him, has fewer ways to act on the psychological world of the child : he, thus, tends to use tactics of control of the behaviour. However, behavioural control would lead to a lack of freedom, which would induce some children’s negative affects. Psychological control, on the other part, would induce anger and would lead to aggressiveness from the child or teenager. This could explain the fact that even if parental control practices are used, some children or adolescents could still exhibit some negative conduts.
MARTIN Maxime and MITACHEVITCH Pauline
Key Words
Psychological and behaviour control, parental pratices, externalizing and internalizing behaviour, prevention,
Vocabulary
On behalf : de la part
Outward conducts : comportement extérieur
Inner-directed behaviour : comportement dirigé vers l’intérieur
To be consistent : être cohérent
To distinguish : distinguer
Agressivness : agressivité
Weakness : faiblesse
Fewer : moins, moins de
Bibliography
Symeou, M., and Georgiou, S. (2017). Externalizing and internalizing behaviour in adolescence, and the importance of parental behavioural and psychological control practices. Journal of Adolescence 60, 104-113. University of Cyprus, Department of Psychology, Nicosia, Cyprus. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.adolescence.2017.07.007