Parenting practices and problematic behaviour in adolescencethe mediating role of deviant peers

Resumo

Problematic behaviour encompasses a broad range of behaviours that break social or legal norms, such as substance use and antisocial behaviour (e.g., aggression or rule-breaking). These types of behaviour are mainly presented in adolescence, even throughout a normative development. As family and peers are the two major socialisation contexts, risk factors related to inadequate parenting practices and antisocial peers have been robustly associated with adolescent problematic behaviour. More specifically, research has indicated that, in the natural transition from childhood to adolescence, negative parenting may lead to affiliating with deviant peers which, in turn, is strongly related to higher levels of problematic behaviour. Therefore, the four studies included in this work aimed to analyse the effects of parental knowledge (including adolescent disclosure, parental control and parental solicitation), parental support, parent-child conflict and deviant peers on different types of antisocial behaviour and substance use. Those studies were specially focused on examining the mediating role of deviant peers in the relationship between negative parenting and problematic behaviour in adolescence. The findings overall indicate that, although parenting practices may be not directly related to problematic behaviour, negative parenting is significantly related to it through increasing the affiliation with deviant peers; that is, through the mediation of deviant peers. Taken an integrative approach into account, this work discusses the results emphasising possible implications regarding the prevention of problematic behaviour in adolescence.