African American Adolescents

1
African American Adolescents And Parents
Changing Conceptions of Parental Authority

• Judith Smetana
• Hugh F. Crean
• Nicole Campione-Barr
• Presented at SRCD, 2003
• University of Rochester

2
Domains of Parental Authority

• Moral Acts that affect others rights or welfare
• Social-Conventional Arbitrary, agreed-on,
  contextual norms (like etiquette manners) that
  structure social interactions
• Prudential Acts pertaining to comfort, safety,
  harm to the self
• Personal Preferences or choices that only affect
  the actor (e.g., privacy, control over ones
  body)
• Multifaceted/ Friendship Acts that have
  overlapping conventional and personal components
  (e.g. the state of the teens room) or
  conventional, personal, psychological
  components

3
Parental Authority Stimulus Items

• Moral - breaking promises, lying to parents,
  hitting siblings, stealing money
• Conventional -cursing, using bad manners, talking
  back, not doing chores
• Prudential - drinking alcohol, smoking
  cigarettes, doing drugs
• Personal- sleeping late on weekends, how to spend
  allowance money, choosing own clothes or
  hairstyles
• Multifaceted - not cleaning bedroom, wearing
  multiple earrings, watching cable TV, staying out
  late
• Friendship - seeing friends that parents dont
  like, doing things with friends rather than
  parents, when to start dating

4
Growth Curve Modeling

• Multilevel models of change run using SEM to
  compare mothers adolescents trajectories of
  change
• Slope indicators constrained to 0, 2, 5
• Models run first with intercepts ( slopes)
  unconstrained then again constraining the
  intercepts ( slopes) to be equal
• If the fit does not change significantly between
  the 2 models, then such constraints do not
  significantly deteriorate the overall fit of the
  model (e.g. mothers and adolescents do not
  differ significantly)

5
Changes in Legitimate Parental Authority for
Moral Issues
6
Changes in Legitimate Parental Authority for
Conventional Issues
7
Changes in Legitimate Parental Authority for
Prudential Issues
8
Moral, Conventional, Prudential Models

• ?2 df ?2 Diff df Diff p RMSEA    
• Moral
• Unconstrained Model 64.05 30
  lt.001 0.11
• Intercepts Constrained 71.02 31 6.97 1
  lt.01  
• Slopes Constrained 64.58 31 0.53 1 ns  
• Conventional   
• Unconstrained Model 61.62 23
  lt.001 0.13
• Intercepts Constrained 70.94 24 9.32 1
  lt.01  
• Slopes Constrained 62.33 31 0.71 1 ns  
• Prudential
• Unconstrained Model 60.36 31 lt.001 0.10
• Intercepts Constrained 67.81 32 7.45 1 lt.01  

9
Significant Predictors of Intercepts

• .

Adolescent Gender ?s Mothers Education ?s
Moral -.31 .30
Conventional -.29 .26
Personal -.25 .31
10
Changes in Legitimate Parental Authority for
Personal Issues
11
Model for Personal Issues

•    
• ?2 df ?2 Diff df Diff p RMSEA    
• Unconstrained Model 49.20 26 lt.01 0.10
• Intercepts Constrained 79.25 27 30.1 1 lt.001  
• Slopes Constrained 50.98 27 1.78 1 ns  

12
Changes in Legitimate Parental Authority for
Multifaceted Issues
13
Changes in Legitimate Parental Authority for
Friendship Issues
14
Multifaceted and Friendship Models

• ?2 df ?2 Diff df Diff p RMSEA
• Multifaceted Issues
•    
• Unconstrained Model 55.56 23 lt.001
  0.12
• Intercepts Constrained 91.77 24 36.21 1
  lt.001  
• Slopes Constrained 55.60 24 0.04 1
  ns  
•          
• Friendship Issues
•    
• Unconstrained Model 29.16 23 ns 0.05
• Intercepts Constrained 72.92 24 43.77 1
  lt.001  
• Slopes Constrained 29.19 24 0.02 1 ns  

15
Summary

• African American mothers teens affirmed
  parents legitimate authority to regulate moral,
  conventional, prudential issues
• African American teens rejected parents
  legitimate authority to regulate personal issues,
  while mothers authority over personal issues
  declined (from strongly equivocally affirming
  their authority)
• Changes (declines) in judgments of parental
  authority were primarily over multifaceted
  friendship issues

16
Measures of Adolescent Adjustment

• Problem Behavior Survey (Mason et al., 1996)
• 19 items assessed on 7-point Likert scales
• including drug alcohol use, gang activity,
  vandalism, stealing, truancy, fighting
• alpha .72
• Depressed Mood (CES-D, Radloff, 1977)
• 20 items assessed on 4-point Likert scales
• alpha .89

17
Problem Behavior Depressed Mood Regressed on
Parental Authority Concepts