Family relationship and parenting practices: a pathway to adolesents’ collectivist and individualist values?

Adolescents’ perceptions of parenting and
family relationships are important variables for identifying
mechanisms involved in how children acquire values and
how these values are transmitted through families. In a
sample of 515 adolescents, we investigated whether perceptions
of the quality of parental practices would predict
adolescents’ collectivist and individualist values. We
hypothesized that perceived quality of family relations
would mediate the relationship between the quality of
parental practices and collectivist values but not of individualist
values. The results of structural equation modeling
suggested that perception of the quality of parental
practices predicted adolescents’ both collectivist and individualist
values. The predicted mediation effect was found
for collectivist values, but not for individualist values. The
results point to different functions of parenting and family
relations on value acquisition. Implications for practice,
such as the development and implementation of interventions
to improve the formation of adolescents’ values by
enhancing the quality of parenting and family relationships
are discussed.
Acknowledgments This work was supported by the Ph.D. Grant of
the first author (SFRH/BD/62182/2009), financed by Technology and
Science Foundation (FCT).