Chapter 1 8 Each person is like every other person, each person is like some others, and each person is like no other person. Adapted from Kluckhohn & Murray (1948) Each person is a unique human being, one of a kind, shaped by many idiosyncratic experiences throughout life. One of the primary contexts in which most humans gain lifechanging experiences is the parent-child relationship (Bronfenbrenner, 2005; Sameroff, 2010). While it is universally expected that parents (or other caregivers) have an impact on their children’s everyday functioning and long-term development (Bronfenbrenner, 2005; Granic et al., 2008), and vice versa (Kuczynski & Parkin, 2007), the nature of parentchild influences is assumed to vary across families as a function of the characteristics of the child, the parent, the parent-child relationship, and other contexts (Belsky & Pluess, 2009; Darling & Steinberg, 1993; Soenens et al., 2015). Influences between parents and children may even be idiosyncratic, as every family has its own unique set of characteristics (e.g., the personality of the child and the parents, quality of interparental relationship, culture, religion, etc.) (Bronfenbrenner, 2005) and a unique history of interactions (Lollis & Kuczynski, 1998). Thus, how parents and their children influence each other might be unique to each family, fueling a child’s individual development. Adolescence is a period in which parents are considered to still significantly contribute to their children’s developmental trajectory, for better or worse. Adolescence is the period roughly between 10 and 25 years (Smetana & Rote, 2019; Steinberg, 2014), and is marked by many physiological (e.g., pubertal changes), physical (e.g., growth spurt), neurological (e.g., gradually maturing prefrontal cortex), social (e.g., stronger peer orientation, more independence from parents), and psychological changes and developments (e.g., heightened emotionality, identity formation) (Smetana et al., 2006; Soenens et al., 2019; Steinberg, 2005). Alarmingly, adolescence also seems to be a sensitive period for developing internalizing (e.g., depressive and anxiety symptoms; Hankin et al., 1998; Shorey et al., 2022) and externalizing problems (e.g., substance abuse; (Kessler et al., 2005; Nivard et al., 2017), which can persist into adulthood (Copeland et al., 2009; Kim-Cohen et al., 2003) and have long-lasting effects on other psychosocial outcomes (Clayborne et al., 2019; Copeland et al., 2009). As one of the primary socialization figures, parents play a significant role in navigating their adolescent child through the challenges and opportunities of growing up (Soenens et al., 2019). However, as parenting
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