Sophie schultz: 2111 WRITING ASSIGNMENT

The Effects of Parenting on Psychological Flexibility

Sophie Schultz
The University of Memphis

EFFECTS OF PARENTING AND PSYCHOLOGICAL FLEXIBILITY

The Effects of Parenting on Psychological Flexibilty

Problem
The problem researchers have identified in Inflexible parents, inflexible kids: A 6year longitudinal study of parenting style and the development of psychological flexibility in
adolescents, dude. One problem researchers ran into along the way was that not all of the
students who began the study, followed through. There was a drop out rate, absence of school on
research days, conflicting school events, and students moving to other school in the middle of the
research.
Purpose
The purpose of this article is to show or broaden the knowledge of the effects of different
parenting styles on childrens psychological flexibility. Psychological flexibility is a set of
processes in which describe the pattern of how people interact with their surroundings or
environment. The purpose for the researchers was to see which of their four hypothesis could be
right. They expected that authoritarian parenting would be associated with low levels of
psychological flexibility. Second, they thought authoritative parenting would be associated with
high level of psychological flexibility. Third, they believed that as children grew up, they would
rate their parents more permissive overall. Lastly, they believed that there would be increases of
authoritarian and permissive parenting due to lower psychological flexibility in their adolescents.
Another purpose was to see the individual changes between psychological flexibility and
parenting practices.
Background and Previous Research
There is some background and previous research on self-regulation in this article. Recent
studies on parenting did find that it was possible for parents to have combined or correlated

EFFECTS OF PARENTING AND PSYCHOLOGICAL FLEXIBILITY

parenting styles. It showed that parenting could be interrelated in that warmth and behavioral
control correlated positively with behavioral control, and both warmth and behavioral control
correlated negatively with psychological control (Finkenauer et al. 2005). Past r esearch has also
showed that authoritative parents usually have much higher levels of psychological flexibility
than children raised by authoritarian parents.
Research Performed
The research they performed included people of all economic statuses and all ethnicities.
The age cohort was anywhere from eleven to fourteen years of age. All together there were seven
hundred and fourty-nine students. At the start of the study the surveyed all of the children. The
study selected their variables from five different Australian high schools. The study went on over
a six-year time frame. It followed the students from their first to their last years of secondary
education. The researchers used a self-report method to collect their information. They would
have the students report to them their own view point of their parents attempts to discipline them
and their general day to day behavior. Self-report is the only known method to measure
psychological flexibility (Golster el al. 2011). Researchers measured three different types of
parenting styles for this study. These parenting styles were authoritarian (high in demandingness,
low in responsiveness), authoritative (high in demandingness, high in responsiveness), and
permissive (low in demandingness, high in responsiveness).
Finding and Conclusions
Through this article it was found that more controlling parents (authoritative) lead to a
decrease in self-regulation. They were correct with their hypothesises which stated that
authoritarian parenting would be associated with lower psychological flexibility and authoritative
parenting would associated with higher psychological flexibility.

EFFECTS OF PARENTING AND PSYCHOLOGICAL FLEXIBILITY

Course Connections
This article and study connected our course by comparing different types of parenting. In
our course we have learned about all of the parenting types. This also connects by describing
how it effects certain types of development in these students. We also discuss in this course how
certain things impact a childs development.

EFFECTS OF PARENTING AND PSYCHOLOGICAL FLEXIBILITY

References
Winsor, D. L., Murrell, V.S., & Magun-Jackson, S. (Eds.). (2016). Lifespan
development: An educational psychology perspective (3rd ed). New York:
Pearson.