Positive parenting and its impact on positive development of adolescents and emerging adults across academic trajectories

Abstract

The literature shows that parenting style is the main factor for the positive development of children at all stages of development. Positive development has been evaluated using various psychological constructs. This study analyzes this relationship using four constructs with a strong adaptive component: dispositional optimism, hope, general self-efficacy and sense of coherence. Additionally, we adopt an ecological perspective and examine whether these associations differ across cross-sectional age groups, sex, and academic pathways. To this end, a sample of 1507 adolescents and emerging adults from different academic pathways, between 12 and 18 years old and 52% female, completed the following questionnaires: the Youth Life Orientation Test (YLOT), Children’s Hope Scale (CHS), General Self-Efficacy Scale (GSS), Sense of Coherence Scale (SOC-13) questionnaires and a scale for evaluating parenting style (Scale for the Evaluation of Parenting Style in Adolescents). A random sampling was carried out by schools in a Spanish province. Previous reliability and validity analyses of the constructs were carried out and correlational analyses and structural predictions were made. The results show that the constructs define a unique factor of positive development and that positive parenting is associated with better positive development. However, the relevance of these relationships are lower as the age group is higher, except in the group of young people with less successful academic pathways. The relation between positive parenting and positive development are different depending on sex, adolescent stage and academic pathway. Families that provide positive support may calibrate their involvement to the needs typically associated with different age groups. Implications for family and academic arenas are discussed.