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Parental Meta-Emotion, Attachment to Parents, and Personal Agency in Adolescents

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Filipa Nunes at University of Porto
Filipa Nunes
Catarina Pinheiro Mota at Universidade de Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro
Catarina Pinheiro Mota
Tiago Ferreira at University of Porto
Tiago Ferreira
Ingrid Schoon at University College London
Ingrid Schoon
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Abstract

Guided by attachment theory, we explored in the current study the links between parental emotion-coaching, attachment to parents and adolescent's sense of agency. Further, we examined a possible mediating role of adolescent’s attachment to parents in the association between parental emotion-coaching and sense of agency. All models control for cumulative psychosocial risk, and adolescents’ sex and age, and take into account the reports of both mothers and fathers. The sample included 501 Portuguese families comprising adolescents, their mothers, and their fathers. Adolescents (ages ranged from 15 to 18) reported on their attachment to parents, personal agency, and cumulative psychosocial risk, whereas mothers and fathers independently completed a questionnaire assessing their meta-emotion skills. The results indicate that both mothers’ and fathers’ emotional coaching are positively associated with the quality of adolescent’s attachment to parents. Nonetheless, parental emotion-coaching are not directly associate with sense of agency. The quality of emotional bond with father is linked to a more positive sense of agency, while relationships characterized by mother’s inhibition of adolescent’s exploration are associated with less positive perceptions of agency. Parental emotion coaching seems to be associated with the sense of personal agency through the quality of attachment to parents. These results are discussed according to attachment theory taking into account the parents’ importance to adolescents' development. Our findings provide a first attempt to unravel the possible links between parental emotion-coaching, attachment to parents and sense of agency; nevertheless, they need to expand.
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Parental Meta-Emotion, Attachment to Parents, and
Personal Agency in Adolescents
Filipa Nunes
1, 2
, Catarina Pinheiro Mota
2, 3
, Tiago Ferreira
1, 2
, Ingrid Schoon
4
, and Paula Mena Matos
1, 2
1
Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences, University of Porto
2
Relationships, Change Processes and Wellbeing Research Group, Center for Psychology, University of Porto
3
Department of Education and Psychology, University of Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro
4
University College London (UCL), Social Research Institute
Guided by attachment theory, we explored in the present study the links between parental emotion-
coaching, attachment to parents, and adolescent’s sense of agency. Further, we examined a possible
mediating role of adolescent’s attachment to parents in the association between parental emotion-coaching
and sense of agency. All models control for cumulative psychosocial risk, and adolescents’sex and age, and
take into account the reports of both mothers and fathers. The sample included 501 Portuguese families
comprising adolescents, their mothers, and their fathers. Adolescents (ages ranged from 15 to 18) reported
on their attachment to parents, personal agency, and cumulative psychosocial risk, whereas mothers and
fathers independently completed a questionnaire assessing their meta-emotion skills. The results indicate
that both mothers’and fathers’emotional-coaching are positively associated with the quality of adolescent’s
attachment to parents. Nonetheless, parental emotion-coaching are not directly associate with sense of
agency. The quality of emotional bond with father is linked to a more positive sense of agency, while
relationships characterized by mother’s inhibition of adolescent’s exploration are associated with less
positive perceptions of agency. Parental emotion-coaching seems to be associated with the sense of personal
agency through the quality of attachment to parents. These results are discussed according to attachment
theory taking into account the parents’importance to adolescents’development. Our findings provide a first
attempt to unravel the possible links between parental emotion-coaching, attachment to parents, and sense of
agency; nevertheless, they need to expand.
Keywords: parental meta-emotion, emotion-coaching, attachment to parents, personal agency, adolescence
Supplemental materials: https://doi.org/10.1037/fam0000947.supp
The development of the perception of capacity to shape one’s own
life course is a great challenge but also a resource for young people
during adolescence (Zimmerman & Cleary, 2006). In the present
study, we analyze sense of personal agency as a multidimensional
process comprising four main aspects: (a) the ability to set self-
determined and volitional goals (Deci & Ryan, 2004); (b) the belief
that positive results will be obtained in the future (Hitlin & Elder,
2007); (c) the capacity of engaging in decision-making processes
relevant for achieving goals (Schoon & Heckhausen, 2019); (d) the
belief of own capacity to achieve self-determined goals (Hitlin &
Long, 2009). People with a strong sense of agency consider
themselves authors of their own life course because they believe
that their behaviors and decisions are shaped by their internal and
volitional goals, and their beliefs of optimism and self-efficacy give
them the strength to persevere in the face of obstacles (Schoon,
2018). They tend to show great capacity to adapt to developmental
challenges and evidence greater psychoemotional adjustment (Côté,
2002;Gallagher et al., 2019).
According to Schoon (2018), the experiences shared in the family
context, namely the support received by parents, can shape sense of
agency. In the present study, guide by assumptions of attachment
theory, we focus on two pivotal dimensions of parenting and family
relations, parental meta-emotion and attachment to parents. We seek
to understand the contributions of these two dimensions to adoles-
cents’sense of agency, controlling the role of cumulative psycho-
social risk, age, and sex of adolescents.
Although “parental meta-emotion”and “parental sensitivity”are
crucial elements to a secure attachment, they refer to different aspects
of the relational dynamics between parents and children. Parental
sensitivity refers to parents’ability to correctly perceive, interpret,
and answer to children’attachment behaviors (Ainsworth, 1969).
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
This article was published Online First January 13, 2022.
Filipa Nunes https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1315-3327
Catarina Pinheiro Mota https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1814-7425
This work was funded by the Portuguese Science Foundation (UIDB/
00050/2020) and a PhD scholarship (SFRH/BD/133032/2017).
There are no relevant financial or nonfinancial competing interests to
report.
The raw data and materials used in this manuscript are not openly available
due to privacy and ethical restrictions, but can be obtained from the
corresponding author (pmmatos@fpce.up.pt). No aspects of the study
were preregistered.
A preliminary version of this manuscript was presented at the Symposium
“Building bonds, building blocks: Investigating attachment in adolescents’
lives”of the 17th European Association for Research on Adolescence
conference (EARA 2020) in September 2020 in Porto, Portugal (Online
format).
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Paula
Mena Matos, Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences, University
of Porto, Rua Alfredo Allen s/n, 4200-135 Porto, Portugal. Email: pmma
tos@fpce.up.pt
Journal of Family Psychology
© 2022 American Psychological Association 2022, Vol. 36, No. 6, 964–974
ISSN: 0893-3200 https://doi.org/10.1037/fam0000947
964
... Some previous studies have evidenced the positive effect of parent-child closeness on adolescents' subjective psychological well-being. For example, a better relationship with parents was associated with better adolescent perseverance (Moilanen et al., 2018;Nunes et al., 2022), school connectedness (Maiya et al., 2020), and optimism (Ben-Zur, 2003;Nunes et al., 2022) in various samples of adolescent studies. In a sample of African American adolescent females, a higher quality parent-child relationship was found to predict positive psychological functioning in adolescents (Barber et al., 2003). ...
... Some previous studies have evidenced the positive effect of parent-child closeness on adolescents' subjective psychological well-being. For example, a better relationship with parents was associated with better adolescent perseverance (Moilanen et al., 2018;Nunes et al., 2022), school connectedness (Maiya et al., 2020), and optimism (Ben-Zur, 2003;Nunes et al., 2022) in various samples of adolescent studies. In a sample of African American adolescent females, a higher quality parent-child relationship was found to predict positive psychological functioning in adolescents (Barber et al., 2003). ...
... Davidov's review (2021) found that in several research studies, parental physical discipline, as a form of harsh parenting, has predicted child behavior problems in both European American and African American families. Likewise, the positive effect of parent-child closeness on adolescents' subjective psychological well-being has been found in different groups, including American families from different races or ethnicities (Barber et al., 2003;Ben-Zur, 2003;Maiya et al., 2020;Moilanen et al., 2018) and Portuguese families (Nunes et al., 2022). These past findings suggest a possible similar effect of certain parenting on adolescents' subjective psychological well-being between immigrant and nonimmigrant families in the US. ...
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Parenting has a significant impact on adolescent well-being, particularly subjective psychological well-being. This study investigated the relationship between parenting and adolescents' subjective psychological well-being in fragile families and whether immigration background moderated these associations, using data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCW) Wave 6 (age 15). The main finding of this study showed that parental monitoring, nonviolent discipline, and parent-child closeness were positively associated with adolescents' subjective psychological well-being. In contrast, harsh parenting and parenting stress were negatively associated with this outcome. Regression models with interactions indicated that immigration background exacerbated the associations of parental monitoring and parenting stress with adolescents' subjective psychological well-being. These findings indicate that more policy efforts and parenting interventions are needed to strengthen the positive functioning of adolescents in fragile families. It is also recommended that these policies and interventions become more culturally sensitive in response to the unique challenges that immigrant families face.
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... These relational changes do not imply that parents lose their relevance as attachment figures but that adolescents become less dependent on them (Allen, 2004). Parents are likely to remain a secure base for adolescents when necessary (Allen, 2004) and can shape adolescents' sense of agency (Nunes et al., 2022a). ...
... In contrast, the inhibition of exploration and individuality by the mother, but not the father, undermines this development. These findings expand the results from previous studies insofar as they show that the quality of the emotional bond with the father and inhibition of exploration and individuality by the mother are not only correlated concurrently with sense of agency (Nunes et al., 2022a) but also are an essential correlate for its development. Further, these findings also show that the quality of the emotional bond with the mother is crucial to shaping adolescents' sense of agency. ...
... Results suggest that adolescents may have characteristics (e.g., personality traits) and contexts (e.g., social support) that allow them to overcome disadvantages in sense of agency throughout late adolescence. These results make essential contributions to the literature and expand the results of previous studies (Nunes et al., 2022a) insofar as they show that despite the impairment of adolescents' sense of agency by exposure to cumulative risk, adolescents have resources capable of reducing the damaging impact of these risks as time goes. Despite these reflections, it is essential to highlight that most participants in the current study only reported a few risk factors simultaneously. ...
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Although literature states that individual, relational, and contextual factors contribute to adolescents’ sense of agency, more research is needed to clarify and understand how adolescents develop this belief over time. The current study examined the stability/change trajectories of the sense of agency during adolescence, specifically across high school, analyzing whether attachment to parents over time, adolescents’ sex, cumulative risk in baseline, and pandemic-related stress explained these trajectories. The sample included 467 Portuguese adolescents (40.7% were males; Mage = 15.58 years, SD = 0.80), evaluated three times across 18 months. This work yielded three significant findings. First, adolescents’ sense of agency significantly increased over time, with significant between-subject variance at the initial levels but not at the growth rate. Second, attachment to parents consistently links to adolescents’ sense of agency across time, despite the differential contributions from attachment to mothers and fathers. Third, boys reported greater growth in the sense of agency than girls. Adolescents’ cumulative risk at T1 predicted lower initial levels of sense of agency, whereas higher pandemic-related stress predicted less growth of the sense of agency. These findings emphasize the contributions of individual and family characteristics and the role of the broader social context in shaping the development of adolescents’ sense of agency. The findings underline the need to consider further the differential influences of adolescents’ relationships with mothers and fathers to understand changes in adolescents’ sense of agency.
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... These relational changes do not imply that parents lose their relevance as attachment figures but that adolescents become less dependent on them (Allen, 2004). Parents are likely to remain a secure base for adolescents when necessary (Allen, 2004) and can shape adolescents' sense of agency (Nunes et al., 2022a). ...
... In contrast, the inhibition of exploration and individuality by the mother, but not the father, undermines this development. These findings expand the results from previous studies insofar as they show that the quality of the emotional bond with the father and inhibition of exploration and individuality by the mother are not only correlated concurrently with sense of agency (Nunes et al., 2022a) but also are an essential correlate for its development. Further, these findings also show that the quality of the emotional bond with the mother is crucial to shaping adolescents' sense of agency. ...
... Results suggest that adolescents may have characteristics (e.g., personality traits) and contexts (e.g., social support) that allow them to overcome disadvantages in sense of agency throughout late adolescence. These results make essential contributions to the literature and expand the results of previous studies (Nunes et al., 2022a) insofar as they show that despite the impairment of adolescents' sense of agency by exposure to cumulative risk, adolescents have resources capable of reducing the damaging impact of these risks as time goes. Despite these reflections, it is essential to highlight that most participants in the current study only reported a few risk factors simultaneously. ...
Stability and Change in Adolescents’ Sense of Agency: Effects of Attachment to Parents, Sex, Multiple Risk, and Pandemic Stress
Presentation
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The current study examined the stability/change trajectories of sense of agency across high school, analyzing whether these trajectories are influenced by attachment to parents over time, as well as adolescent’s sex, psychosocial risk in baseline, and pandemic stress. The sample includes 467 Portuguese adolescents (59.3% were females; Mage = 15.58 years, SD = .80), who were evaluated three times across 18 months. This work yielded three major findings. First, we found that adolescents’ sense of agency significantly increased over time, with significant inter-subject variance at the initial levels, but not at the growth rate. Second, we observed a stable effect of attachment to parents on sense of agency across late adolescence. Further, we found differential effects of attachment to father versus mother on agency beliefs. Third, we verified that boys reported a greater growth of sense of agency than girls; that adolescents who experienced higher levels of multiple risks in T1 showed lower initial levels of sense of agency; and that adolescents who reported higher levels of pandemic-related stress reported less growth of sense of agency. These findings emphasize the role of individual and family characteristics, as well as the role of the wider social context in shaping the development of sense of agency during adolescence. Moreover, the findings underline the need to consider differential influences in the relationship with fathers versus mothers to gain a better understanding of changes in agency beliefs.
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... Participants respond according to a 6-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (completely disagree) to 6 (completely agree) separately for mother and father relationships. Since its original development, the questionnaire has been used in several independent sample, and evidence for reliability and construct validity had been gathered (Barrocas et al., 2017;Moura & Matos, 2008;Nunes et al., 2020Nunes et al., , 2022Rocha et al., 2011). The Cronbach's alphas are as follows: IEI-Father (.825) and IEI-Mother (.827). ...
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... Third, and perhaps most importantly, accurate portrayals are less likely to minimize the importance of real problems that ought to be addressed. For instance, research has shown that both childhood and old age are associated with negative circumstancesa limited sense of agency, for instanceand that many of these circumstances are grounded in specific aspects of the social and economic environments (Kumpulainen, Lipponen, Hilppö, & Mikkola, 2014;Moore, 2016;Nunes, Mota, Ferreira, Schoon, & Matos, 2022). Collection development strategies that favor positive portrayals of childhood and old age may inhibit public awareness of these issues and, in turn, make it harder to address the problems experienced by children and older adults. ...
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Sense of personal agency (SPA) is crucial for adolescents’ psychosocial adjustment and well-being. The relationships with parents and peers, as well as the adolescent’s sex, have been suggested as important correlates of adolescents’ SPA. Nevertheless, no prior study has adopted a gender perspective to analyze how the intertwining of relationships between parents and peers relates to adolescent’s sense of agency. The current study investigates whether attachment to peers mediates the links between attachment to parents and SPA and whether these links are equal for boys and girls. The sample includes 1119 Portuguese adolescents (56.2% girls; 43.8% boys) aged 14 to 19. Structural equation modeling results suggest that attachment to peers is more strongly associated with boys’ SPA than girls. Results also indicate that regardless of adolescent sex, the quality of the emotional bond with the mother, but not the father, is positively associated with adolescents’ SPA. Furthermore, the results suggest that attachment to peers mediates the links between attachment to parents and adolescents’ SPA. Quality relationships with the adolescent’s different-sex parental figures (mother-son, father-daughter) are associated with higher-quality peer relationships, which are associated with a stronger SPA. On the contrary, inhibition relationships with the adolescent’s same-sex parental figure (mother-daughter, father-son) are associated with lower quality in adolescent’s peer relationships, which is associated with a lower SPA. These findings underline the importance of considering a gender perspective to understand better the role of family and peer contexts in the adolescent SPA.
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