Parenting Practices and Social Skills by Adolescent of Different Family Configurations

Abstract

This study analyses the relation between the perception about mothers’s parenting practices and the own social skills by adolescents under different family configurations as well as the gender influence on these evaluations. Participants were 477 adolescents from nuclear, separated and remarried families of the first and second years of public high school. Data were collected through: Parenting Styles Inventory (PSI); Social Skills Inventory for Adolescent (SSIA-Del-Prette). Analyses of variance indicated that family configuration did not exert influence in parenting practices. Adolescents from remarried families had more social skills of affective approach than adolescents from nuclear families and separated parents; mothers were more inconsistent and negligent with the daughters and used more positive monitoring their sons; girls were more empathic than boys. Globally, this work suggests that family transitions have no negative impact on various dimensions of healthy development of adolescents.