1 General introduction 21 Besides individual characteristics, bio(psychosocial) ecological models also place special emphasis on how contextual characteristics might moderate proximal parenting processes (Bronfenbrenner, 2005; Sameroff, 2010). These moderating contextual characteristics can exist at different levels: meso- (e.g., work of parents), exo- (e.g., neighborhood), and macrolevel (e.g., culture) (Bronfenbrenner, 2005). In the parenting literature, it has been suggested that the context might determine the extent to which a parenting practice is perceived to be appropriate or normative. Controlling parental behavior may be appropriate and therefore more effective in reducing adolescent problem behavior in families who live in high-risk environments, such as neighborhoods with high crime rates, whereas the same behavior may be perceived as intrusive by adolescents who live in low-risk environments (Boykin McElhaney & Allen, 2001). Similarly, a parenting practice might be more promotive of adolescent functioning if it is (perceived to be) culturally normative (Lansford, 2022; Soenens et al., 2015). Thus, parent-adolescent influences are also assumed to vary as a function of characteristics outside the parentadolescent relationship, including their immediate and remote environment. 2. THEORY VERSUS METHODS: IDENTIFIED METHODOLOGICAL GAPS Even though established theories, as summarized in Figure 1 and visualized in Figure 2, assume that the dynamic processes between parenting and adolescent functioning occur within a family over time and are reciprocal and heterogeneous across families, hitherto, most of these meta-theoretical elements still lack empirical evidence. Despite the thousands of parenting studies (e.g., Pinquart, 2017a, 2017b), methodological gaps have refrained parenting science from truly examining the theorized dynamic processes between parenting and adolescent functioning. Similar to other fields in psychological science (Moeller, 2022; Molenaar, 2004), there is thus a considerable mismatch between theory and the generally applied methods. What these three methodological gaps are and how this dissertation addresses them is explained below. 2.1 Mind the (first) gap: Between-family methods do not tap into within-family processes The first methodological gap concerns the ecological level at which the theoretical assumptions and inferences from empirical findings are most commonly drawn. Although the theorized dynamic processes between parenting and adolescent functioning are
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