The Contribution of Parenting to Adolescent Self-Compassion and Internalizing Problems: A Meta-Analytic Structural Equation Modeling Approach

Although the beneficial psychological effects of self-compassion are well documented, less is known about its contributing factors. Attachment theory and social mentality theory posit that parenting might contribute to adolescent self-compassion. Nevertheless, no previous meta-analysis has systematically investigated this association. Furthermore, self-compassion might be a mediator in explaining the well-established link between parenting and adolescent internalizing problems, although previous meta-analyses have rarely systematically explored this nor investigated how these processes unfold differently for adolescents with different characteristics and from different cultures. This meta-analysis included 110 articles comprising 120 independent samples with 88,349 adolescents. The results of three-level meta-analyses revealed that positive and negative parenting were associated with higher and lower adolescent self-compassion, respectively, with small to moderate effect sizes. Additionally, meta-analytic structural equation modeling result showed that self-compassion mediated the relationships between both positive and negative parenting and internalizing problems. These associations in the mediation model were largely equivalent across adolescent age, gender and different cultures except for a stronger effect of self-compassion on internalizing problems in samples with higher proportions of female adolescents and from more individualistic cultures. The findings imply that parenting and adolescent self-compassion might be crucial targets for mitigating adolescent internalizing problems.