Parent-early adolescent relationship quality and problem behavior in Hungary, the Netherlands, India, and Iceland.
Higher parent-child relationship quality has been associated with less internalizing and externalizing problem behavior. However, it remained less clear whether these associations are universal or depend on the country under investigation. Furthermore, fathers are still understudied, even though there is increasing evidence of their important role in early adolescent development. Our study compared the association of mother-child as well as father-child relationship quality with early adolescents' problem behavior in four culturally different countries, namely Hungary (N = 293; Mage  = 11.22; 53% boys), the Netherlands (N = 242; Mage  = 11.20; 48% boys), India (N = 230; Mage  = 10.68; 61% boys), and Iceland (N = 261; Mage  = 10.90; 53% boys). Early adolescents filled out questionnaires in their classroom, assessing warmth and conflict with fathers and mothers and internalizing and externalizing problem behavior. Stepwise multi-group path analysis demonstrated no cross-cultural differences in associations between quality of the parent-child relationship and problem behavior. We did not find any effects of maternal or paternal warmth. However, across samples conflict with mothers was associated with more internalizing and externalizing problem behavior, and conflict with fathers was associated with more externalizing problem behavior. Our findings highlight the need to target conflict with both fathers and mothers in interventions across different countries, especially when addressing externalizing problem behavior.
['Hillekens|Jessie|J|https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0681-4588', 'Buist|Kirsten L|KL|', 'Horváth|Lili O|LO|', 'Koper|Natasha|N|https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6876-9121', 'Ólafsdóttir|Jóna|J|https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8422-7442', 'Karkdijk|Esther|E|', 'Balázs|Judit|J|']
D002648:Child D002652:Child Behavior D003431:Cross-Cultural Comparison D005260:Female D006801:Humans D006814:Hungary D007055:Iceland D007194:India D008297:Male D009426:Netherlands D010287:Parent-Child Relations D000066553:Problem Behavior
problem behavior parent-child relationship warmth conflict Cross-cultural research