The socializing role of the problem-constraint link: A multimethod investigation

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Highlights

  • This study examines parental usage of logical consequences in real-life settings.

  • Logical consequences seemed to foster both youth compliance and internalization.

  • The problem-constraint link and parental harshness were not systematically related.

  • The problem-constraint link and parental autonomy support were positively related.

  • A two-step procedure to properly identify and use logical consequences is discussed.

Abstract

Experimental studies on parent-youth disagreements have revealed the potential socialization advantages of favoring parental constraints with strong problem-constraint links (i.e., logical consequences) over constraints with weak problem-constraint links (e.g., mild punishments). In this study, we extended this line of research by examining the relation between youth perceptions of their parents' actual usage of constraints during disagreements and indicators of compliance and internalization. A total of 437 adolescents (Mage = 15.90; 53% female) completed a cross-sectional questionnaire on global parent-youth disagreements, while a subsample of 179 adolescents also completed daily diaries of situational parent-youth disagreements. Results replicated and extended those of past studies. In both designs, constraints with stronger problem-constraint links were, overall, related to higher scores on indicators of compliance and internalization. These relations were not moderated by age. Noteworthy relations were also found between covariates (e.g., harshness, autonomy-support) and outcomes. A two-step procedure to identify logical consequences is presented.

Introduction

Socialization is a lifetime process in which individuals, through their interactions with socialization agents, learn to comply with important societal rules and internalize their underlying values and norms, such that they may successfully adapt and contribute to their social group. Compliance refers to individuals' abidance with rules – that is, the degree to which they actually follow those rules. Complying with societal rules is deemed essential to one's socialization as it fosters the development of social and regulatory skills, in addition to promote harmonious relationships with socialization agents (and ensued successful socialization opportunities; Patterson & Fisher, 2002). Internalization, another key component of socialization, refers to the incorporation of societal values and norms into one's own schemas. When individuals have internalized values and norms underlying societal rules, they tend to comply with these rules for autonomous reasons (i.e., for reasons that are coherent with their sense of self; e.g., because they personally find these rules important), rather than solely for controlled reasons (i.e., for contingencies that are external to their sense of self; e.g., to avoid losing privileges; Grolnick, Deci, & Ryan, 1997). The success of individuals' socialization process is thus reflected in their aptitude to comply with societal rules as well as in their reasons for doing so.

One key interaction context found to represent a valuable opportunity but also a considerable challenge to foster these two socialization goals is the context of disagreements originating from youth rule-breaking behaviors (Smetana, 2011). This study relies on Self-Determination Theory, a theory that uses the concepts of universal needs to understand human development and socialization process, to examine how parental usage of constraints with strong problem-constraint links (i.e., of logical consequences) may promote both compliance and internalization in the challenging context of parent-youth disagreements originating from adolescent rule-breaking behaviors.

Socialization is a learning process that shapes people's development across the life span, though some periods seem more decisive than others. For instance, during adolescence, youths develop cognitive abilities that allow them to reflect more elaborately on various societal rules (Smetana, 2011). By acquiring a greater understanding of societal principles and their relevance during this developmental period, youths can then make critical strides in their socialization process (see Smetana, Robinson, & Rote, 2014, for a discussion on socialization during adolescence). Yet, because full emotional and cognitive maturity has yet to be reached at this stage, youths remain vulnerable to faulty judgments and decision-making, such that they still highly depend on others' guidance to ensure the success of their development and socialization (e.g., Lin, 2016).

Through their interactions with their adolescents, parents play a determining guiding role in youth socialization (Smetana, 2011). Indeed, while the transition from childhood to early adolescence is generally marked by youth emerging independence from their parents and increasing amount of time spent with other socialization figures (e.g., friends), it nonetheless also tends to be accompanied by an overall increase in parent-youth discussions about socialization-related issues (Larson, Richards, Moneta, Holmbeck, & Duckett, 1996). In particular, disagreements over rules and their underlying issues become increasingly frequent during adolescence, thereby offering parents as many valuable opportunities to further youth socialization (Smetana, 2011). Disagreements between parents and youths may be defined as overt differences of opinions that vary in intensity, ranging from expression of differences of opinion to heated conflicts surrounding youth behaviors (Weymouth, Buehler, Zhou, & Henson, 2016). Studies examining the frequency of parent-child disagreements suggest that their rates typically peak during the transition from childhood to adolescence and then gradually decline throughout mid and late adolescence (Aquilino, 1997; Smetana, 2011).

During adolescence, disagreements often relate to issues that comprise both personal facets (i.e., facets beyond legitimate social regulation that are neither right nor wrong and that do not impact youth health and security) and non-personal ones (e.g., prudential, moral, and conventional facets; Smetana, 2011; Smetana & Asquith, 1994). According to scholars, such disagreements represent key socialization opportunities because they offer youths the possibility to use their developing cognitive abilities to discuss, reflect upon and negotiate divergent perspectives on societal rules or their underlying issues, thereby enabling youths (and parents) to adjust their own perspective and make necessary accommodations within their relationship for internalization to occur (Soenens, Vansteenkiste, & Van Petegem, 2015). Yet, there are also times when discussed rules may no longer be adjusted and where youths, despite parent verbal interventions, do not intend to comply and may break rules (e.g., Robichaud, Mageau, & Soenens, 2020).

In rule-breaking situations, research suggests that the socialization value of parent-youth disagreements should not only depend on parent verbal interventions, but also on parent aptitude to successfully enforce broken-rules as rule enforcement sends a strong message to youths about the importance of following the broken-rule (Baumrind, 2012). From a developmental perspective, rule enforcement (like compliance) remains necessary in adolescence as youths demonstrate a vulnerability to precarious decision-making (Lin, 2016). In line with these propositions, research shows that rule enforcement in response to disagreements originating from non-compliant youth behaviors predicts greater youth adjustment than an absence of parental intervention, and that these effects are stronger when parent-youth disagreements pertain to matters that are not solely personal (Smetana, 2011). It thus seems that in rule-breaking situations involving non-personal issues and for which initial verbal interventions have proven insufficient to induce compliance, rule-enforcement through some form of parental constraints could protect youths from situations that present significant risks to their optimal development and socialization.

Constraints are behavioral limits imposed by authority figures on subordinates. In parent-youth interactions, examples of constraints include the removal of privileges (e.g., using one's cellphone) or the requirement to do chores (e.g., dishes). While parental constraints may promote compliance to a greater degree than the sole usage of verbal interventions (e.g., Robichaud, Mageau, & Soenens, 2020), constraints' impact on internalization has been a subject of debate among scholars. On the one hand, scholars have proposed parent usage of constraints as a key component of an optimal parenting style – that is, one that would foster youth socialization (Baumrind, 2012). On the other hand, studies have found negative and inconsistent relations between constraints and indicators of internalization and adjustment (e.g., Gershoff et al., 2010). Notably, adding constraints to verbal interventions has sometimes been shown to respectively heighten and lower youth controlled and autonomous reasons to comply (Robichaud, Mageau, & Soenens, 2020). Hence, while constraints might play a key role in eliciting compliance, their usage may also jeopardize internalization. To better understand how parents can successfully use constraints during parent-youth disagreements, we turn to Self-Determination Theory (SDT), a theoretical framework that established the necessary conditions for optimal internalization to occur.

According to SDT, youth successful internalization of important societal principles largely depends on the extent to which youth social environment supports, rather than thwarts, their innate psychological need for autonomy (i.e., their need to feel a sense of volition and self-endorsement over their behaviors). Autonomy support (AS) refers to behaviors that are (1) supportive of youth active participation in decision-making and problem-solving, (2) informational (e.g., providing rationales for one's own perspective), and (3) empathic (e.g. acknowledging youth perspective; Mageau et al., 2015). According to SDT, parents who support their youth need for autonomy provide youths with the necessary information and psychological space for internalization to occur, which in turn facilitates youth autonomous (i.e., internalized) endorsement of key socially encouraged behaviors (Joussemet, Landry, & Koestner, 2008). In contrast, parents who thwart their youth need for autonomy pressure youths to behave, feel, and think in specific ways, thereby increasing the salience of external contingencies and preventing the necessary accommodations for thorough internalization to occur. As such, pressured youths tend to experience heightened controlled (i.e., non-internalized) reasons to comply with relevant social behaviors (Soenens & Vansteenkiste, 2010). Thus, based on SDT, it may be expected that constraints with more AS and less AT features have greater socialization value.

One constraint feature argued to play a key role in minimizing their negative impact on youth autonomy and related internalization-hindering risks is the presence of a logical link between the problem created by youth rule-breaking behaviors and the constraint selected to address this problem (Robichaud, Lessard, Labelle, & Mageau, 2020). Parents establish such problem-constraint link when their constraint requires youths to address the problem created by their misbehavior (e.g., by repairing something broken), or experience the consequences of having someone address the problem for them (e.g., losing a privilege used problematically). When constraints are applied in such manner, they are called logical consequences.

Logical consequences could minimize constraints' negative impact on youth autonomy for several reasons. First, because constraints with strong problem-constraint links are intrinsically directed towards solving problems created by youth transgressions, they arguably present three key AS ingredients. Specifically, they (1) offer youths the possibility to participate actively in solving the problem created by their behavior, and (2) provide valuable information on the transgression-induced problems, and hence on the rule's importance (Robichaud, Lessard, et al., 2020). Also, because they rely on problem-solving to elicit compliance (rather than on aversion as typical constraints do; Dadds & Salmon, 2003), they may (3) be applied in a more empathic way (the third fundamental ingredient of AS) and in a less pressuring way (a key characteristic of AT behaviors). For instance, to solve transgression-induced problems, parents and youths may actively search together for solutions that have minimal impacts on youth feelings and activities. These AS features, paired with the fact that logical consequences are logically linked to the transgression-induced problem (Robichaud, Mageau, & Soenens, 2020), should lead youths to perceive this parental intervention as more acceptable than other forms of constraints, which in turn should facilitate youth adherence to, and internalization of, the message underlying the parental intervention (Grusec & Goodnow, 1994).

Logical consequences have been identified as a key component of successful parenting programs (Leijten et al., 2019), though empirical research examining the specific socialization value of this strategy is scarce. In a recent series of experimental studies conducted among youths (Robichaud & Mageau, 2020; Robichaud, Mageau, & Soenens, 2020) as well as children and their mothers (Mageau et al., 2018; Robichaud, Lessard, et al., 2020), researchers have differentiated constraints based on their problem-constraint linkage and compared their socializing value. Specifically, they asked participants to read comic strips depicting mother-youth/child disagreements in which mothers, in response to youth/child persistent rule-breaking behaviors, used one of three interventions: (1) a constraint with a strong problem-constraint link (i.e., a logical consequence), (2) a constraint with a weak problem-constraint link (i.e., a mild punishment), or (3) a no-constraint intervention (e.g., AS verbalizations only). After reading each comic strip, participants rated the depicted parent intervention on indicators of compliance and internalization.

Results of these studies showed that logical consequences were evaluated as (A) at least as effective as mild punishments to elicit future compliance (i.e., more so than no-constraint interventions) and, importantly, as (B) having a similar impact on youth need for autonomy as AS verbalizations only (while mild punishments were rated as thwarting youth need for autonomy to a greater extent than AS verbalizations only). Results also showed that (C) children of all ages perceived logical consequences as the most acceptable strategy, that (D) younger youths (i.e., 15 years or younger) believed that logical consequences (vs. mild punishments) would elicit as much (vs. less) autonomous compliance than AS verbalizations (youths of 16 years and older did not anticipate that mothers' choice of intervention would influence their autonomous compliance), and that (E) youths rated their controlled compliance similarly in response to logical consequences and mild punishments (both were anticipated to elicit more controlled compliance than no-constraint interventions). Finally, results suggested that (F) the socializing role of the problem-constraint linkage was more apparent when disagreements were perceived by youths as involving non-personal issues; all constraints were evaluated rather poorly when issues were categorized by youths as personal matters. These results were observed while controlling for variables intimately tied to youth compliance and internalization, including mother AS vs. AT communication style (Mageau et al., 2018) and the harshness level of mother interventions (Pinquart, 2017). Taken together, these results suggest that the problem-constraint link may be a determining internalization-fostering constraint characteristic.

While results from this line of research seem promising, they are also limited in that they only provide information on youth anticipated reactions to constraints with different degrees of problem-constraint linkage. This limitation is important to consider, for the restraining aspect of constraints may be more salient to youths in real-life settings than while reading hypothetical scenarios, such that observed differences between actual constraints with strong and weak problem-constraint links would be mitigated. Alternatively, youths may perceive constraints with no link to the problem created by their behavior as even more unacceptable when actually undergoing them, thereby heightening the previously observed socializing advantages of logical consequences in real-life.

Furthermore, a thorough examination of developmental issues in youth appraisal of constraints with varied problem-constraint links has yet to be conducted. As previously mentioned, the nature of parent-youth relationships evolves throughout adolescence, with youths increasingly claiming independence from their parents and questioning the legitimacy of parental jurisdiction as they grow older (Aquilino, 1997; Smetana & Asquith, 1994). As such, one could expect that older youth heightened claim for personal jurisdiction over their behaviors would lead them to perceive all forms of constraints as equally autonomy-thwarting and unacceptable, thereby making the problem-constraint link irrelevant to their internalization process. Oppositely, one could hypothesize that such heightened susceptibility to appraise parental constraints negatively would render older youths more sensitive to the quality of constraints, thereby making the presence of a strong problem-constraint link more relevant to their socialization process than for younger youths. Thus far, however, studies have generally supported the socialization value of the problem-constraint link throughout childhood (Mageau et al., 2018; Robichaud, Lessard, et al., 2020) and adolescence (Robichaud & Mageau, 2020; Robichaud, Mageau, & Soenens, 2020).

In order to address the aforementioned limitations, we examined the socialization role of logical consequences, but this time in real-life settings and while considering developmental issues more closely. Our primary objective was to evaluate youth perceptions of the problem-constraint linkage in their parents' actual usage of constraints during disagreements and examine whether such perceptions could predict youth compliance and internalization. To assess compliance, we examined the prevalence of parent-youth disagreements originating from youth behaviors. To assess internalization, we measured youth reasons to comply with parent rules (i.e., autonomous and controlled; Grolnick et al., 1997) and their acceptability beliefs regarding parent interventions (Grusec & Goodnow, 1994).

To enhance the quality of our methodology and ensued validity of our findings, we used a multimethod design. Specifically, we examined the socializing role of logical consequences at two complementary levels of generality (i.e., at global and situational levels). We chose this methodological approach because, in addition to offering an opportunity to replicate and extend past results twice, it has the advantage of providing information on the extent to which socialization outcomes may be similarly predicted by parent global and situational use of logical consequences.

To further specify the role of logical consequences, we also controlled for variables known to affect the socialization value of parent interventions, namely (1) parent AS vs. AT communication style (Mageau et al., 2015, 2) parent intervention harshness level (Pinquart, 2017), and (3) the type of issue underlying parent-youth disagreements (i.e., personal vs. non-personal; Smetana, 2011). We also aimed to distinguish the quality of parent constraints (i.e., in terms of their problem-constraint linkage) from their quantity by controlling for the frequency of parent usage of constraints. Finally, we took into consideration the potential role of youth and parent gender in youth apprehension of parent interventions.

We hypothesized that the previously observed socializing advantages of logical consequences would be at least as apparent in real-life settings. Specifically, we expected that while controlling for the aforementioned covariates, the more youths globally and situationally perceived parent constraints as characterized by strong problem-constraint links (i.e., as logical consequences), (1) the fewer (or at worst equal amounts of) parent-youth disagreements originating from their behaviors they would report. We also hypothesized that they would report (2) higher acceptability beliefs regarding their parent intervention and (3) more autonomous reasons to comply. No difference in controlled compliance was expected.

For our secondary objective, we investigated whether the observed relations differed according to youth age. Based on past research, we hypothesized that any observed moderation effect of age would reveal stronger relations between the problem-constraint link and youth socialization outcomes for younger adolescents, compared to older adolescents.

Section snippets

Participants

We targeted high school (80.40%) and college (19.60%) students still living with their parents and recruited a sample of 437 adolescents (M = 15.91 years, SD = 1.20 years; 52.60% girls). All youths completed a cross-sectional questionnaire, while a subsample (n = 179) also accepted to complete diaries of their daily interactions with their parents.1

Missing data and normality

Examining our cross-sectional data revealed that 5.72% or less of the data were missing per variable (M = 3.18%, SD = 1.08%). Conducting the Little's MCAR test for this data (while also including youth situational reports of disagreements, which was missing for the 258 youths who had not completed the diary questionnaires), suggested that data were not missing completely at random, χ2(424) = 533.77, p < .001. This confirmed our choice of imputing missing data.

Looking at the normality of our

Discussion

This study aimed to further clarify the socializing role of constraints characterized by strong problem-constraint links (i.e., of logical consequences). To do so, we used a multimethod design in which we asked youths to share (at global and situational levels) their perceptions of their targeted parent's usage of constraints during disagreements that originate from their behaviors. We then examined the relations between these perceptions and indicators of compliance and internalization. To

Conclusion

In sum, research suggests that the socialization value of parent-youth disagreements is intimately tied to the quality of the strategies parents adopt during these interactions. According to Self-Determination Theory, the more parents adopt strategies that enhance youth autonomy, the more they facilitate youth socialization process. While past studies highlighted the potential advantages of parental constraints characterized by strong (vs. weak) problem-constraint links on youth autonomy and

Acknowledgements

The Fond de recherche du Québec – Société et culture (FRQSC) and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) funded and facilitated this research through a grant to the third author and a doctoral scholarship to the first author.

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