Teenagers raised by parents who rely on strict, punitive discipline with little warmth tend to hold more enduring beliefs that justify rule-breaking and aggression, and may later experience rises in anxiety and depression above their own typical levels. The findings, published in the Journal of Research on Adolescence, suggest that harsh, unyielding parenting relates to adolescent attitudes and emotional health through different pathways depending on whether researchers compare separate families or track changes within the same teenager over time.
Authoritarian parenting is a child-rearing style defined by rigid rules, high control, verbal hostility, and punishments delivered without explanation, combined with very little warmth. Prior research has linked this punitive approach to both internalizing problems, which are inward-focused emotional struggles like anxiety and depression, and externalizing problems, which involve outward disruptive behaviors such as aggression and delinquency.
Most studies of disruptive youth development have focused on outward delinquent actions rather than the mindset that precedes them. This mental foundation, known as antisocial thinking, consists of beliefs, attitudes, and values that approve of breaking rules, defying authority, and using aggression during peer conflicts. According to social information processing theory, these background beliefs shape how young people interpret social situations, making them more likely to assume others have hostile intentions and respond aggressively.
Endorsement of antisocial thinking typically increases from late childhood into middle adolescence, when personal beliefs become more ingrained and resistant to change. To examine how these attitudes develop alongside emotional distress, Wusirige, a PhD candidate in the Department of Human Development and Family Science at Syracuse University, and co-authors Bo Jian and Gabriel J. Merrin drew on emotion regulation and social-cognitive frameworks. In this view, a cold, hostile home environment may create chronic stress that wears down a teenager’s ability to manage difficult feelings, while threats and unexplained punishments may teach youth to view authority as arbitrary and coercion as acceptable.
Source: PsyPost — Read the full article on the original site ↗