青少年早期内化问题的稳定性及其与母亲教养的关系

通过对502名11岁城市青少年为期2年的追踪调查,考察了青少年早期内化问题发展的稳定性及母亲教养对1年后青少年内化问题的预测.结果发现:(1)青少年早期的内化问题具有较高的稳定性,与男青少年相比,女青少年保持较高的内化问题水平;(2)母亲控制惩罚教养可以正向预测1年后男青少年的内化问题,母亲温情引导可以负向预测女青少年的内化问题.青少年先前的内化问题对母亲教养与其1年后内化问题之间关系的调节作用存在性别差异:对于先前内化问题水平较高的男青少年而言,母亲较高的温情引导和控制惩罚教养正向预测其1年后的内化问题;对于先前内化问题水平较高的女青少年而言,母亲较多的温情引导则负向预测其1年后的内化问题.

The Stability of Internalizing Problem and Its Relation to Maternal Parenting during Early Adolescence

Early adolescence is a particularly vulnerable period of internalizing problem. Internalizing problem during early adolescence frequently would persist into the whole adolescence and adulthood, resulting in poor prognosis and increasing the risk of education, unemployment and other antisocial behaviors in the future. Existing researches reported that internalizing problem in early adolescence were associated with maternal parenting, and many researchers have found that adolescents' previous developmental characteristics could influence the manner in which mother treated them. This longitudinal study was to examine the stability of adolescent's internalizing problem and the prediction of maternal parenting, on one hand, and gender differences, on the other hand. A total of 502 young adolescents (252 for boys and 250 for girls), 11-year-olds filled out the Youth Self-Report about internalizing problem subscale and their mothers finished questionnaire about their parenting style at two times (T1/T2) within a 1-year interval. Results were as follows: Young adolescents tended to maintain a high level of stability of internalizing problem, and girls reported higher level of internalizing problem than boys. Maternal parenting of supervision-discipline at T1 could predict a significant increase in adolescents' internalizing problem at T2 for boys, but this wasn't the case for girls. Previous level of early adolescents' internalizing problem could moderate the prediction of maternal warmth-conduct and supervision-discipline on the following internalizing problem. Specifically, as for boys with higher level of internalizing problem, their mothers' warmth-conduct and supervision-discipline could predict a significant increase in internalizing problem one year later. Conversely, for girls with higher level of internalizing problem, their mothers' warmth-conduct could predict a significant decrease. When it comes to those adolescents with lower level of internalizing problem, their mothers' warmth-conduct and supervision-discipline couldn't predict significantly the following outcome. Based on self-report and mother-report data, the shared method variance could be avoided. But our sample was a bit homogenous, consisting of mostly adolescents from high level of family socioeconomic status. So the results should be re-tested in other samples with different family context.