Differences in parent and youth reported parenting strategies and the relationship with youth reported resilience: Who you ask matters

Background

It is common in parenting research for parents to report on the parenting strategies they utilize rather than soliciting children and youths’ experiences of being parented. Who we include in research may change our understanding of parent-child relationships and related outcomes for children and youth.

Objective

To: a) examine similarities and differences among 21 parent- and youth-reported parenting strategies and b) examine the differences in trends for each parenting strategy and youth-reported resilience depending on who reported the parenting strategies.

Participants and setting

Data were from the Well-being and Experiences (WE) Study (n = 1000 youth/parent dyads), a community sample of youth aged 14–17 years and parents from Canada collected from 2017 to 2018.

Methods

Descriptive statistics, McNemar's test, and linear regression models were used to analyze the data.

Findings

The prevalence of five parenting strategies were statistically similar when reported by youth and parents, while three parenting strategies were statistically higher among youth reports compared to parent reports, and 13 parenting strategies were statistically higher among parent reports compared to youth reports. Only one parent-reported parenting strategy was associated with decreased youth-reported resilience. No parent-reported strategies were associated with increased youth-reported resilience. For youth-reports, five parenting strategies were significantly related to increased youth resilience and three parenting strategies were significantly related to decreased youth resilience. Findings indicate that children's and youths' voices should be prioritized in future parenting research, which may inform parenting supports and interventions to prevent child maltreatment and to promote resilience for children and youth.