Chapter 2 40 parental control is higher compared to families in which parental control is lower (Pinquart, 2017a). Whether such estimates of relative differences between families can be used as a basis for theoretical inferences regarding parenting processes that occur within families is one of the ongoing discussions in the parenting literature and beyond (see Berry & Willoughby, 2017; Hamaker, 2012; Keijsers, 2016; Molenaar, 2004). One of the most recent insights is that drawing inferences about processes within families, without separating stable difference between families, might lead to less accurate conclusions about the magnitude and/or direction of within-family effects (Hamaker et al., 2015). To illustrate, a recent study by Dietvorst et al. (2018) found evidence of opposing effects between and within families. Comparing families, the authors found that families with higher average levels of adolescent secrecy also had higher average levels of parental privacy invasion compared to families with lower average levels of privacy invasion (positive association). However, when they analyzed the fluctuations within families, they found that in periods with higher levels of adolescent secrecy were followed by periods with lower levels of parental privacy invasion (negative time-lagged effect). In this case at least, if processes in families would be inferred from such between- family findings, it would be mistakenly inferred that adolescents’ increased secrecy might result in their parents becoming more invasive, whereas actually a reversed process was observed. To avoid an ecological fallacy in the interpretation of empirical results when investigating within-family parenting processes, the theoretical question should match the level of analysis (i.e., between-family versus within-family level). When examining hypotheses about parenting processes occurring within families, the matching analytical level is the within-family level. For example, a longitudinal study might apply a multilevel approach that examines within- family effects by separating variance due to stable differences between families in their averages from variance due to the fluctuations around the families’ own stable averages (e.g., Hamaker et al., 2015; Keijsers, 2016). Thus, for research questions that explore dynamic family processes that are described by many theoretical perspectives on parenting, some of which are discussed below, the withinfamily level is the matching empirical level. The Current Study Previous studies on parenting have largely contributed to the understanding how families differ in parenting and adolescent adaptation. For example, these studies
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