A healthy family climate, including parents' attitudes towards their children and the quality of sibling relationships, is essential for child resilience. One of the domains where parental attitudes are determinative is the children's academic life. In an unhealthy family climate, for instance, parental pressure for academic success may cause…

Discrepancies in first- (M = 14.97 years, SD = 1.82) and second-born adolescents' (M = 12.20 years, SD = 1.90 years) and their parents' perceptions of parental authority legitimacy (PAL) were examined in a longitudinal sample of 145 predominantly White, middle-class, U.S. families. Utilizing a growth curve modeling approach, changes in the…

Parenting style has been shown to have significant impact on a child's development. Baumrind developed the concept of three parenting styles that is still used today including: Authoritarian/controlling, authoritative/directive, and permissive. Of these, the authoritative/directive parenting style has proven the most effective with children.…

Adolescents differ in the extent to which they believe that parents have legitimate authority to impose rules restricting adolescents' behavior. The purpose of the current study was to test predictors of individual differences in legitimacy beliefs during the middle school years. Annually, during the summers following Grades 5, 6, and 7, early…