Effects of Parental Interpersonal Power/Prestige and Acceptance on the Psychological Adjustment of Spanish Youth

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

Table 1 shows that both boys and girls tended to perceive their mothers and fathers to be loving (accepting). Moreover, both boys and girls tended to self-report fairly positive psychological adjustment. In addition, boys and girls tended to agree substantially on the level of their parents’ interpersonal power and prestige.

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Table 1.

Descriptives and Gender Differences in Measures of Perceived Maternal and Paternal Acceptance, Children’s Psychological Adjustment, Interpersonal Power and Prestige, and Gender Inequality.

Measures	M	SD	n	t
Maternal acceptance
Boys	32.43	6.32	80	1.00
Girls	31.11	8.88	107
Total	31.61	8.10	187
Paternal acceptance
Boys	35.65	9.52	80	1.50
Girls	33.42	7.50	107
Total	34.43	8.87	187
Adjustment
Boys	83.58	11.07	80	1.32
Girls	80.98	11.81	107
Total	82.66	11.41	187
Power
Boys	12.94	3.39	80	−0.13
Girls	13.03	4.42	107
Total	13.00	4.09	187
Prestige
Boys	14.58	3.21	80	−0.21
Girls	14.69	3.15	107
Total	14.64	3.31	187
Gender inequality
Males	10.96	3.11	29	0.63
Females	11.27	2.56	73
Total	11.18	2.71

As seen in Table 2, psychological adjustment correlated positively and significantly with both perceived maternal and paternal acceptance. In addition, both interpersonal power and prestige correlated significantly with perceived paternal (but not maternal) acceptance as well as with each other. However, neither power nor prestige correlated significantly with children’s psychological adjustment.

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Table 2.

Correlations Among Maternal and Paternal Acceptance, Interpersonal Power and Prestige, and Children’s Psychological Adjustment (N = 187).

	1	2	3	4
1.Perceived maternal acceptance	—
2. Perceived paternal acceptance	.52**	—
3. Power	.11	−.25**	—
4. Prestige	.06	−.31**	.35**	—
5. Psychological adjustment	.38**	.32**	−.05	.10

*

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

Given the fact that children’s psychological adjustment was significantly correlated with perceived paternal acceptance, power, and prestige, it was unclear what unique contribution acceptance, power, or prestige actually made to children’s psychological adjustment—or whether there might be an interaction between the parenting variables and perceived power or prestige. To estimate this, we conducted a hierarchical regression analysis. Because none of the sex differences in perceived acceptance or psychological adjustment was statistically significant, all analyses were completed using the total sample. Furthermore, following Kline’s (1998) recommendation, we included perceived interpersonal power and prestige as two separate variables in the regression analysis because they were only moderately correlated (r = .35).

The model was analyzed using children’s sex and age, and fathers’ occupational status used as control variables in Step 1. The main predictors of parental (maternal and paternal) acceptance along with power and prestige were included in Step 2. Interactions between parental acceptance and interpersonal power and prestige were analyzed in Step 3. As shown in Table 3, both fathers’ occupation and children’s age were significantly and positively related to children’s psychological adjustment. In effect, Step 1 shows that children of unskilled laborers and menial service workers tended to be somewhat more maladjusted than did offspring of better employed fathers. Moreover, older children tended to be somewhat more poorly adjusted than did younger children. These control variables explained 8% of the variance in children’s adjustment.

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Table 3.

Hierarchical Regression Analyses Predicting Children’s Psychological Adjustment.

Predictors		β	R 2	ΔR2
Step 1			.08	.08**
Constant	66.23
Sex		−.11
Fathers’ occupational status		.17*
Age		.19**
Step 2			.22	.13**
Constant	66.13
Paternal acceptance		.16*
Maternal acceptance		.24*
Power		−.09
Prestige		.17*
Step 3			.27	.04**
Constant	64.32
Maternaccept*power		−.00
Maternaccept*prestige		−.09
Paternaccept*prestige		.40*
Paternaccept*power		−.29*

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

*

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

Results in Step 2 show that maternal acceptance, paternal acceptance, and parental prestige (but not parental power) all contributed significantly and uniquely to children’s psychological adjustment. Collectively, these variables explained an additional 13% of the variance in children’s adjustment.

Finally, results of analyses in Step 3 indicate that 2 two-way interactions (i.e., perceived paternal acceptance by interpersonal power and perceived paternal acceptance by prestige) were significant. We plotted both interactions and tested the statistical significance of slopes using procedures suggested by Cohen and Cohen (1983), and Aiken and West (1991). Figure 1 shows that under the condition of +1 SD interpersonal power—where fathers and mothers were perceived to have equal interpersonal power (β = .70, p = .001)—or under the condition of mean interpersonal power also where both parents shared power equally (β = .22, p = .004)—the relationship between perceived paternal acceptance and children’s psychological adjustment was significant. This relationship was not significant, however, under the −1 SD condition where fathers were perceived to have less power than mothers (β = .32, p = .40). These results suggest that the relationship between perceived paternal acceptance and children’s adjustment intensified to the degree that children perceived their parents to share interpersonal power equally. The magnitude of the relationship was not significantly affected, however, when fathers’ power was perceived to be less than mothers’. In fact, the effects of paternal acceptance on children’s adjustment were strongest when fathers were perceived to have more interpersonal power than mothers.

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Figure 1.

Paternal acceptance predicting children’s psychological adjustment at three levels of parental power.

Figure 2 shows that under the condition of +1 SD prestige—where fathers were perceived to have more prestige than mothers (β = .47, p= .003)—and under the condition of mean prestige, where both parents tended to share prestige equally (β = .24, p= .004), the relationship between paternal acceptance and children’s adjustment was significant. This relationship was not significantly affected, however, under the −1 SD condition where fathers were perceived to have less prestige than mothers (β = .22, p = .33). These results suggest that the relationship between perceived paternal acceptance and children’s adjustment intensified to the degree that children perceived their parents to share prestige equally, as well as when children perceived their fathers to have more prestige than mothers. This effect tended to be strongest, however, when fathers were perceived to have greater prestige than mothers. The magnitude of the relationship between paternal acceptance and children’s adjustment was not significantly affected when fathers were perceived to have less prestige than mothers.

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Figure 2.

Paternal acceptance predicting children’s psychological adjustment at three levels of parental prestige.

Discussion

As expected, results of this study show that both boys and girls in Spain tend to perceive their mothers and fathers to be quite accepting. Moreover, they tend to self-report fairly positive psychological adjustment. And they tend to perceive their parents to be approximately equal in interpersonal power and prestige. Results of correlation analyses also show that both perceived maternal acceptance and perceived paternal acceptance were significantly correlated with the children’s psychological adjustment. Beyond this, hierarchical multiple regression analyses indicate that perceived maternal acceptance, perceived paternal acceptance, and prestige (but not interpersonal power) make independent contributions to children’s adjustment after controlling for the influence of children’s sex and age, and fathers’ occupational status. Moreover, results of these analyses indicate that fathers’ (but not mothers’) interpersonal power and prestige moderate the relationship between perceived paternal acceptance and children’s psychological adjustment. Specifically, the relationship between perceived paternal acceptance and children’s adjustment intensified to the degree that children perceived their parents to share power and prestige equally. However, the effects of perceived paternal acceptance on children’s adjustment were especially strong when fathers were perceived to have both more interpersonal power and more prestige than mothers.

These results are consistent with results reported by Carrasco and Rohner (2012) who found in a sample of three hundred thirteen 9- through 16-year-old Spanish youth that the contribution of fathers’ acceptance to children’s adjustment is greater than mothers’ in families where fathers are perceived by children to have either higher interpersonal power or higher prestige than mothers. However, that study also found that the relation between children’s perceptions of parental acceptance and children’s adjustment was most affected in families where one parent—either mother or father—was perceived to have both higher power and higher prestige than the other parent. Those results were consistent with family systems theory (Minuchin, 1985), where power—along with family cohesion (i.e., warmth and low levels of hostility among family members)—is viewed as a fundamental dimension of family relationships (Gehring, Wentzel, Feldman, & Munson, 1990). Moreover, recent research by Huo and Binning (2008), and Huo, Binning, and Molina (2010) demonstrated that feelings of respect (or prestige) influence important aspects of group functioning as well as group members’ psychological well-being.

The current study has limitations that should be acknowledged. One of its major weaknesses may be related to the measure of interpersonal power. That is, both power and prestige were measured with five indicators each. Because of the small number of items defining each variable, it is possible that the constructs of interpersonal power and prestige are underrepresented (Shadish, Cook, & Campbell, 2002), which would lead to fairly low reliability. In fact, we did find low reliability (α = .50) in the measurement of interpersonal power. A second limitation of this study pertains to its restricted sample size. This issue becomes most problematic in the context of plotting interactions because of the loss of participants in each group.

Despite these limitations, results of this study and prior research in Spain converge on the conclusion that children’s perceptions of their fathers’ power and prestige moderate the impact of fathers’ love-related behaviors on their children’s psychological adjustment. Mothers’ love, though uniquely important, appears in this study to have no such moderating influence.