7 Summary and general discussion 219 moderators (e.g., parenting stress, experienced support from outside the family (Belsky, 1984). CONCLUDING REMARKS This dissertation examined how key dimensions of perceived parenting affect adolescents’ functioning and vice versa, and how such dynamic parenting processes within families unfold on various timescales and differently across families. Across studies, the findings suggest that, on average, dimensions of parenting wax and wane with adolescent functioning within a family on various timescales, from a daily timescale to a biennial timescale. In addition, the findings suggest that longitudinal influences between parenting and adolescent functioning might not be inherently reciprocal. That is, whether overtime fluctuations in parenting affected the adolescent’s subsequent functioning and/or vice versa varied, on average, across parenting dimensions. Furthermore, when moving beyond ‘the average family’ and instead focusing on individual families, substantial heterogeneity was observed across families in their dynamic parenting processes: which parenting dimensions (or practices) affected an adolescent’s functioning and/or the other way around, and how they affected each other, varied from family to family. Adolescents with higher trait levels of environmental sensitivity and neuroticism seemed especially more strongly affected by parenting than adolescents with lower trait levels in everyday life. Overall, the findings of this dissertation align with long-held theoretical and perhaps even common-held beliefs that parents and adolescents influence each other in idiosyncratic ways. Nonetheless, many theoretical and empirical advances need to be made to truly comprehend the intriguing complexities of parenting adolescents. Therefore, it is about time for parenting research to put the individual family first, recognizing that every family deserves to be understood and to receive effective support which matches their unique dynamics and needs.
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