Chapter 1 10 1. THEORETICAL UNDERSTANDING OF PARENTING ADOLESCENTS 1.1 Influences between parents and adolescents are proximal processes Parents play a central role in the lives of adolescents. Though children spend progressively less time with their parents during adolescence (R. Larson & Richards, 1991), the parentchild relationship remains one of the primary and unique contexts in which adolescents amass positive and negative experiences (Laursen & Bukowski, 1997). Different theories have described how such experiences with parents contribute to adolescents’ development. That is, bio(psychosocial) ecological models view micro-timescale (e.g., real-time) influences between parents and adolescents as one of the proximal processes (i.e., “enduring forms of interaction in the immediate environment”; Bronfenbrenner, 2005, p. 6) that shape the adolescent’s longer-term development (Bronfenbrenner, 2005; Sameroff, 2010). Importantly, both the objective quality of these proximal influences and the subjective quality perceived by adolescents are viewed as important drivers of their development (Bronfenbrenner, 2005). Similarly, scholars who have adopted a dynamic systems perspective to parenting also propose that reoccurring microtimescale influences shape long-term developmental changes (Granic et al., 2008; Smith & Thelen, 2003). Hence, according to these macro-developmental theories, the answer to understanding how individual adolescents grow and mature lies hidden in the nature of the proximal influences in the parent-adolescent relationship. 1.2 Parenting dimensions that contribute to adolescent functioning Macro-developmental theories thus assume that the quality of influences within the parent-child relationship drives the course of future development (Bronfenbrenner, 2005; Sameroff, 2010; Smith & Thelen, 2003). But what constitutes good-quality parenting in adolescence? Various more general and specific parenting theories have proposed which key parenting dimensions, composed of clusters of practices, are relevant in terms of hindering or supporting adolescent functioning (e.g., Kerr & Stattin, 2000; Rohner et al., 2005; Soenens et al., 2017). Overall, this broad range of work can be synthesized into four key parenting dimensions: warmth, autonomy support, behavioral control, and psychological control (Smetana, 2017; Soenens et al., 2019). These key dimensions have been theoretically and empirically linked to a wide range of important domains of adolescent functioning, such as psychosocial (mal)functioning, including internalizing problems (e.g., depressive and anxiety symptoms and low self-esteem) and externalizing problems (e.g., aggression, delinquency, and substance use). The definitions and
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