How have parents raised their kids? Adolescent’s perception of parental responsiveness and demandingness

Abstract The relationship between parents and children and human development has been the greatest interest to Psychology because it impacts the youth’s behaviour and well being. Thus, this study aimed to investigate parental styles adopted by adolescents’ parents from a combination of responsiveness and demandingness dimensions as well as by gender and age group. 296 adolescents aged 14 to 19 years (M=16.03; DP=0.96), high school students from public and private schools in the city of Passo Fundo/RS and surrounding area participated of this study. We used a sociodemographic data questionnaire constructed for the study and Scale of Parental Responsiveness and Demandingness. The analysis revealed that there was a balance between the perception of neglectful (33.1%) e authoritative (32.7%) styles, followed by authoritarian (17.3%) and permissive (16.9%) styles. There were no statistical differences between responsiveness and demandingness and sex. The younger adolescents perceive their mothers as significantly more demanding when compared to the older ones. The same occured with the combined demandingness. The results also indicate that there were statistically significant differences in the perception of responsiveness and demandingness by age group. The findings of this study suggest further investigations, relating parental styles with other variables of influence and evidence the need of parental training for parents who adopt neglectful style.