Affective Appraisal Mediates the Association between Mother-Child Boundary Dissolution and Emerging Adult Functioning across Nations

Parent-child boundary dissolution (PBD) has been found to negatively impact offspring well-being in Western cultures, although cross-cultural findings have been mixed. Given that Western measures of PBD may have a different meaning for different cultures, we examined emerging adults' reports of maternal PBD (psychological control, infantilization, enmeshment, role reversal), their affective appraisal, and functioning in the United States (n = 119), India (n = 104), and South Korea (n = 101). Indians rated mothers as higher on all four PBD dimensions but felt more positive in response to three dimensions than Americans and South Koreans. Findings indicate that affective appraisal of maternal PBD mediated the relationship between dimensions of PBD and functioning. Results suggest that PBD may not be uniformly experienced as negative across cultures.