Interaction of parental discipline strategies and adolescents' personality traits in the prediction of child-to-parent violence

ABSTRACT Background: Child-to-parent violence is a family issue that needs a systemic and integral approach for its evaluation. The main objective of this longitudinal study was to assess the moderating effects of adolescents' borderline personality and psychopathic traits (grandiose-manipulative, callous-unemotional, and impulsive-irresponsible dimensions) in the predictive association between inadequate parental strategies (psychological aggression, corporal punishment, and ignoring misbehavior) and child-to-parent violence. Sex differences were analyzed. Method: The community sample comprised 671 adolescents aged from 12 to 17 years old (Mage = 13.39, SD = 1.15; 50.8% girls, 47.7% boys, and 1.5% non-binary), assessed twice, six months apart from each other. Results: Results showed slightly different patterns of violence towards fathers and mothers – ignoring misbehavior predicted aggression toward mothers, while psychological aggression predicted aggression toward fathers. Moderation analyses showed that the predictive association from ignoring misbehavior to both child-to-father violence (CFV) and child-to-mother violence (CMV) was only significant for adolescents who were high in the psychopathic trait of callous-unemotional, and the predictive association from psychological aggression to CFV was only significant in those adolescents who scored low in the borderline personality trait. Some sex specificities emerged. Conclusions: These findings support the relevance of working on parents' discipline strategies and add the need to work on adolescents' emotional regulation to prevent or deal with child-to-parent violence.

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Jiménez-Granado,Aitor, del Hoyo-Bilbao,Joana, Fernández-González,Liria
Format: Digital revista
Language:English
Published: Sociedad Española de Psicología Jurídica y Forense; Colegio Oficial de la Psicología de Madrid 2023
Online Access:https://scielo.isciii.es/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1889-18612023000100005
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