Effects of Perceived Parental Acceptance–Rejection and Interpersonal Power–Prestige on the Psychological Adjustment of Croatian Adolescents

Introduction from the Editors

In order to avoid unnecessary redundancy across the data-oriented articles in this Special Issue, common issues relevant to all articles are discussed in Rohner’s Introduction (Rohner, 2014). These issues include an introduction to the International Father Acceptance-Rejection Project, of which this article is a part. Common issues also include description of measures used by authors, as well as data analytic procedures employed by all authors. Only information specific to this study is included here.

Method

Results

As shown in Table 1, mean scores for perceived parental acceptance among both males and females indicated that the adolescents perceived their mothers and fathers to be loving and accepting. Both males and females also reported fairly positive psychological adjustment. There were no statistically significant gender differences in perceived maternal or paternal acceptance, or in psychological adjustment. However, even though both males and females saw their parents as being approximately equal in prestige and power, females saw their mothers as having slightly but significantly more power than males did. Females’ reports of parental prestige also diverged significantly from that of males, but in a more minor way. Because of these differences, all further analyses were done for males and females separately. Also, as the correlations between parental power and parental prestige were below .75—Kline’s (1998) criterion for combining two separate variables into a single composite variable—for both males and females, all analyses were done separately for power and prestige.

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Table 1.

Descriptive Statistics and Gender Differences in Measures of Perceived Maternal and Paternal Acceptance, Adolescents’ Psychological Adjustment, and Parental Power and Prestige.

Measures	M	SD	n	t
Maternal acceptance
Males	36.78	10.76	113	−.32
Females	37.23	11.82	145
Total	37.03	11.35	258
Paternal acceptance
Males	34.32	9.27	111	.86
Females	33.26	10.15	143
Total	33.72	9.77	254
Adjustment
Males	88.80	13.89	106	−1.52
Females	91.69	15.02	131
Total	90.40	14.57	237
Power
Males	14.98	4.55	120	4.73**
Females	12.35	4.30	132
Total	13.60	4.61	252
Prestige
Males	15.30	3.68	120	3.21**
Females	13.78	3.77	128
Total	14.52	3.79	248

**

p < .01.

As shown in Table 2, correlations between maternal and paternal acceptance and psychological adjustment for both males and females were significant. Also for males, correlations between paternal but not maternal acceptance and both power and prestige were significant. These positive correlations indicate that lower paternal power and prestige were associated with higher paternal acceptance. For females, correlations between maternal acceptance and both power and prestige were significant but negative. These negative correlations reveal that lower maternal power and prestige were associated with higher maternal acceptance. Neither power nor prestige, however, was significantly correlated with the psychological adjustment of either males or females.

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Table 2.

Correlations Among Maternal and Paternal Acceptance, Parental Power and Prestige, and Adolescents’ Psychological Adjustment.

	1	2	3	4	5
1. Perceived maternal acceptance	—	.39**	−.16	−.19	.45**
2. Perceived paternal acceptance	.43**	—	.23*	.30**	.49**
3. Power	−.43**	.09	—	.61**	.07
4. Prestige	−.43**	.13	.60**	—	.06
5. Psychological adjustment	.48**	.52**	−.07	−.11	—

Note. Coefficients above the diagonals pertain to males; coefficients below the diagonals pertain to females.

*

p < .05. **p < .01.

To determine whether perceived paternal or maternal acceptance and power or prestige interacted to affect either males’ or females’ psychological adjustment, hierarchical regression analyses were conducted—as shown in Table 3. In the first step of the regression analyses, respondents’ age was entered as a predictor of youth’s psychological adjustment. In the second step, perceived paternal and maternal acceptance, power, and prestige were entered as predictors. In the third step, interactions between perceived paternal and maternal acceptance, power, and prestige were entered as predictors.

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Table 3.

Hierarchical Regression Analyses Predicting Youth’s Psychological Adjustment.

		Model for males				Model for females
		β	R 2	ΔR2		β	R 2	ΔR2
Step 1			.04	.04			.01	.01
Constant	39.10				114.53**
Age		.20				−.10
Step 2			.29	.25**			.40	.40**
Constant	46.61				119.28**
Maternal acceptance		.27*				.46**
Paternal acceptance		.34**				.31**
Power		.03				.27*
Prestige		−.01				−.04
Step 3			.35	.05			.41	.01
Constant	57.05*				116.73**
Maternaccept × Power		−.28				−.05
Maternaccept × Prestige		.04				−.04
Paternaccept × Power		.25				−.10
Paternaccept × Prestige		.02				.00

Note. Maternaccept = maternal acceptance; Paternaccept = paternal acceptance.

*

p < .05. **p < .01.

As shown in Table 3, age did not make a significant contribution to either males’ or females’ adjustment. Adding the second block of predictors to the regression equation, however, showed that both maternal and paternal acceptance made independent contributions to the adjustment of both males and females. In addition, parental power made a unique contribution to the adjustment of females. This beta suggests that the more power females perceived their mothers to have relative to their fathers, the better was their psychological adjustment. Collectively, all these variables accounted for 40% of the adjustment of females and 29% of the adjustment of males. There were no significant interactions among key variables for either males or females.

Discussion

Results of the study indicate that youth in Croatia tend to perceive both parents as being loving and accepting. These results are expected and consistent with previous research among Croatian adolescents (Glavak-Tkalić, Vrselja, & Wertag, 2012). Also, both males and females report positive psychological adjustment. Results of correlation analyses show that both perceived maternal and paternal acceptance are significantly correlated with the psychological adjustment of both males and females. There were no significant correlations between interpersonal power and prestige, and psychological adjustment of the youth.

Hierarchical multiple regression analyses indicate that perceived maternal and paternal acceptance make independent contributions to the psychological adjustment of both males and females, after controlling for the influence of adolescents’ age. These results indicate that, as expected, higher perceived maternal and paternal acceptances are related to better psychological adjustment of Croatian adolescents. These results are consistent with previous research (Dwairy, 2010; Khaleque & Rohner, 2012; Rohner & Britner, 2002), and they support parental acceptance–rejection theory’s subtheory, which postulates that perceived parental acceptance is associated universally with the psychological adjustment of children and adults everywhere, regardless of differences in gender, race, geography, language, or culture (Khaleque & Rohner, 2002).

Moreover, the results of this study show that perceived interpersonal power made an independent contribution to daughters’ (but not sons’) psychological adjustment. More specifically, the more interpersonal power fathers are perceived to have relative to mothers, the poorer daughters report their psychological adjustment to be. Alternatively stated, it appears to be true that the more interpersonal power mothers have relative to fathers, the better is daughters’ psychological adjustment. This conclusion is consistent with the results of prior research in Croatia, which showed that adolescent daughters from families where fathers were perceived to have the highest power and prestige self-reported significantly poorer psychosocial adjustment than in families where fathers were perceived to have less power and prestige relative to mothers (Glavak-Tkalić, 2010). A possible explanation for these results is that in Croatia, mothers usually play a more important role than fathers in caring and nurturing children, spending time with them, and making decisions about their care, upbringing, and education. Because mothers are an important role model for daughters, relationships in families where mothers do not fulfill these expected functions may negatively affect daughters (but not sons), and may cause poorer psychological adjustment.

Although results of this study reveal significant relations between perceived paternal and maternal acceptance and adolescents’ psychological adjustment, this relation is not—as it was hypothesized to be—significantly moderated by the level of perceived interpersonal power or prestige of parents. That is, we expected that youths would pay more attention to—and as a consequence they would be more influenced by—whichever parent they perceive to have higher interpersonal power and/or prestige. Results of this study, however, fail to support this hypothesis. This conclusion is inconsistent with the findings of research by Carrasco and Rohner (2012), as well as the majority of other studies in this Special Issue. We have no explanation at this time for this apparent exception.

This study has limitations that need to be considered. First, the research was done on a convenience sample, which was also relatively small. In addition, only data from respondents who currently live with both parents were included in the analyses. This further reduced the sample size. Future studies should be done on a more representative sample of Croatian youth. Furthermore, it would be interesting to see how different sub-dimensions of perceived parental acceptance–rejection and psychological adjustment of children may be related to interpersonal power and prestige.