"More control, more conflicts?" Clarifying the longitudinal relations between parental psychological Control and parent-adolescent Conflict by disentangling between-family effects from within-family effects.

PARENT-teacher relationships; INTERPERSONAL conflict; PANEL analysis; PARENTING; STANDARD deviations; RESEARCH; CROSS-sectional method; RESEARCH methodology; MEDICAL cooperation; EVALUATION research; COMPARATIVE studies; PARENT-child relationships; PARENTS

Introduction: Adolescence is a period when adolescents seek autonomy and parent-adolescent conflict appears inevitable. Even though some research found that parental psychological control triggered parent-adolescent conflict, studies clarifying the directionality of effects at the within-family level are scarce. This study investigated the longitudinal relations between parental psychological control and parent-adolescent conflict using a traditional cross-lagged panel model (CLPM) and the random-intercept CLPM (RI-CLPM) framework.Methods: Data from 2473 Chinese adolescents (Mage Time1 = 13.20 years, standard deviation = 0.52 years; 51.4% male) were collected via a cross-sectional survey across three time points. Adolescents reported on parental psychological control, parent-adolescent conflict, and demographic characteristics at each time point. CLPM and RI-CLPM were utilized.Results: The results from the CLPM analyses suggested a reciprocal effects model. However, the results from the RI-CLPM framework supported a conflict-driven model at the within-family level, wherein if parent-adolescent conflict increased, subsequent parental psychological control would increase as a result. The reverse pattern was not observed.Conclusions: These findings indicate the maladaptive processes of parent-adolescent conflict that shape parental psychologically controlling behaviors in Chinese families at the within-family level. Practical implications, including how to assist Chinese parents to address parent-adolescent conflict and to reduce psychological control, are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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