Adolescents' Psychological Adjustment During Challenging Times: The Role of Mothers', Fathers', and Adolescents' Ratings of Parental Warmth

Public Significance Statement Psychological adjustment during (early) adolescence is a dynamic process that is shaped by a number of factors such as interpersonal relationships with parents. This study shows that parental warmth fosters adolescents' resilience to handle social and emotional problems which is an important factor contributing to adolescent mental health. Parent-adolescent interactions can be very loving, although both parties might not always agree. The level of and discrepancy between ratings on parenting style are indicators for functioning within the family, affecting adolescents' psychological adjustment. This 4-year multiinformant study focuses on emotional warmth in parenting as a precursor for changes in adolescents' psychological adjustment. Altogether, 1,817 German adolescents and their parents report on the quality of their parental warmth, and the former additionally rates their emotional and social problems. Combining the latent true intraindividual change (TIC) and latent congruence (LCM) models, the results indicated that a higher level of jointly perceived parental warmth is linked to more positive adjustment for adolescents, whereas a discrepant rating in terms of a parental overreporting is associated with a lower adjustment. The meaning of shared and discrepant mother-adolescent and father-adolescent ratings for adolescents' psychological adjustment during late childhood and early adolescence is discussed.