2 A systematic review 71 researchers can obtain insights into whether within-family effects are heterogeneous across different families or even across time within the same families (e.g., Zhang et al., 2018). Moreover, it would the interesting to explain this heterogeneity, guided by relevant theories. For instance, ecological theories (Bronfenbrenner, 1986; Sameroff, 2010) assume contextual factors, whereas differential susceptibility theory (Belsky & Pluess, 2009) assumes personality as a factor that might explain differences between families in within- family parenting processes. CONCLUSION A vast amount of research indicates that families differ from each other in parenting and adolescent adaptation. From between-family research, for instance, it is known that in families with more parental control and support children are generally better adapted than in other families. However, to understand the reciprocal within-family processes that link parenting and adolescent adaptation and that are proposed by contemporary theory, longitudinal studies are recommended to assess how over-time fluctuations in parenting and adolescent adaptation are linked within the same family. By conducting a systematic search, the current systematic review found that, even though such within-family studies have grown exponentially, up until the beginning of 2018 there were only 46 published studies. The results of most of the studies indicated that in periods when parents were more supportive and controlling, and parents and adolescents had less negative interaction, adolescents also reported less externalizing and internalizing behavior and other indices of maladaptation. This could suggest that changes in parent’s behavior might be linked to changes in adolescents’ maladaptation. Nonetheless, several studies did not find such within-family associations and a few studies even reported findings that were in the opposite direction of what would have been expected. This might be a hallmark of generally small average effect sizes but also of the existence of unmeasured moderator factors. Moreover, there is barely any evidence whether over-time fluctuations in parenting predict time-lagged fluctuations in adolescent adaptation within families or vice versa, leaving the question of reciprocity in parenting processes largely unanswered. Additionally, although a great deal of studies examined moderators, few studies actually tested whether heterogeneity in within- family associations existed. Hence, it is yet to be described to which extent parenting processes can differ from family- to-family. Therefore, to understand how changes in parenting, such as increasing control or becoming more supportive, may lead to changes in adolescents’ adaptation over time, more studies are needed that assess the full complexity of these dynamic, reciprocal, and heterogeneous processes at the within-family level.
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