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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2026 Nov 4.
Published in final edited form as: Soc Dev. 2026 Sep 22;35(4):e70097. doi: 10.1111/sode.70097

Change Over Time in Parental Psychological Control in Nine Countries

Liane Peña Alampay 1,*, Susannah Zietz 2, Eva Pomerantz 3, Jennifer E Lansford 2, Kirby Deater-Deckard 4, Laura Di Giunta 5, Kenneth A Dodge 2, Sevtap Gurdal 6, Daranee Junla 7, Paul Oburu 8, Concetta Pastorelli 5, W Andrew Rothenberg 2, Ann T Skinner 2, Emma Sorbring 6, Laurence Steinberg 9,10, Lilliana M Uribe Tirado 11, Saengduean Yotanyamaneewong 7, Suha M Al-Hassan 12, Dario Bacchini 13, Marc H Bornstein 14,15,16, Lei Chang 17
PMCID: PMC13730121  NIHMSID: NIHMS2218592  PMID: 42979220

Abstract

Parental psychological control is consistently linked to negative adolescent adjustment across cultures. Yet psychological control also varies normatively alongside developmental transitions in adolescence. This study examines trajectories of mother- and father-reported psychological control from early to middle adolescence across 12 cultural contexts and tests whether levels and rates of change relate to adolescent pubertal status and cultural emphases on family obligations. Participants were mothers and fathers of 1,338 adolescents from the Parenting Across Cultures project: Shanghai, China (n = 123); Medellín, Colombia (n = 108); Naples, Italy (n = 102); Rome, Italy (n = 111); Zarqa, Jordan (n = 114); Kisumu, Kenya (n = 100); Manila, Philippines (n = 120); Trollhättan/Vänersborg, Sweden (n = 129); Chiang Mai, Thailand (n = 120); and Durham, North Carolina, United States (n = 102 African American, n = 99 Latin American, n = 110 European American). Data from five waves (ages 12–16) were analyzed. In most sites, both mothers and fathers reported linear declines in psychological control across adolescence; however, in some sites, trajectories remained stable. Pubertal status at age 12 predicted only the level of father-reported psychological control in two sites. By contrast, fathers’ valuing of family obligation predicted slopes across all sites: When family obligation was highly valued, the rate of decrease in psychological control was lower. Findings indicate both variation and common patterns in changes in parental psychological control across early to mid-adolescence in diverse cultural contexts.

Keywords: psychological control, longitudinal, culture, puberty, family obligations

Psychological control is a form of parental behavior that intrudes upon the child’s thoughts, emotions, and choices, through withdrawal of affection, guilt induction, or invalidation of the child’s perspectives (Scharf & Goldner, 2018). Parent psychological control is considered harmful in that it stifles the child’s developing identity and sense of self (Barber et al., 2005; Soenens & Vansteenkiste, 2010). Extensive meta-analyses have established that this parenting behavior is negatively associated with academic achievement (Pinquart, 2016) and positively associated with internalizing and externalizing problems in children and adolescents (Pinquart, 2017a, 2017b). These harmful consequences of psychological control are evident across diverse cultural contexts (Barber et al., 2005; Chyung et al., 2022; Ng & Wang, 2019), although higher levels of psychologically controlling parenting have been reported in Asian contexts (Ng & Wang, 2019), as well as weaker negative effects among Chinese and Chinese American children (e.g., Chao & Aque, 2009; Olsen et al., 2002).

Much of the research on psychological control considers it a behavior driven by parents’ characteristics, psychological deficits, and developmental history. This approach treats psychological control as a trait-like or stable parenting style (Barber et al., 2005; Scharf & Goldner, 2018). However, parents also respond to children’s characteristics and other contextual events. For instance, parents’ psychologically controlling behaviors increase in response to internalizing and externalizing behaviors in children (Pinquart, 2017a, 2017b) and parents’ daily negative emotions (Aunola et al., 2017). Longitudinal research has also demonstrated that parenting behaviors change over time. Levels of parent- and child-reported parental warmth, behavioral control (i.e. regulation and monitoring of adolescents’ activities and whereabouts), rules/limit-setting, and knowledge solicitation decreased over the ages of 8 to 16 in nine diverse cultural contexts, in conjunction with children’s age and pubertal status (Lansford et al., 2021). Investigating the continuity of parent behaviors over time, such as psychological control, can clarify the dynamic nature of parenting and parent-child relationships, especially during the fluid period of adolescence. This study examines how mothers’ and fathers’ psychologically controlling parenting changes from early to middle adolescence, and whether these trajectories relate to adolescents’ pubertal status and parents’ family obligation values, across 12 cultural groups in nine countries.

Trajectories of Parental Psychological Control

Studies that focus on change in psychological control over time are few and show mixed results. Studies relying on parents’ reports point toward continuity rather than change: a sample of predominantly White mothers and fathers in the United States report small fluctations in psychological control across adolescence (Barber et al., 2005). Similar continuity in psychological control across mid- to late adolescence was indicted in a more recent and diverse parent sample in the United States (Meter et al., 2019).

Studies relying on adolescents’ perceptions show more varied patterns. Rogers and colleagues (2020) reported that for the United States youth in their study, perceptions of mother and father psychological control showed a quadratic trajectory of low starting level at age 12, increasing to age 17, then decreasing gradually through age 19. Similarly, Chinese youth reported increases in psychological control from the 10th to 11th grades (i.e. 15 to 17 years old), and then decreases in 12th grade or age 18 (Zhou et al., 2024). Exceptions to this quadratic trend are Swiss adolescents who report maternal and paternal psychological control as decreasing linearly across ages 11 to 18 (Spitz et al., 2021). In another study comparing Chinese and American early adolescents, perceived psychological control declined across ages 12–13 for American, but not for Chinese youth (Chen et al., 2021).

Taken together, these mixed findings suggest that psychological control trajectories may depend on who is reporting, as well as the cultural context in which families are embedded. Adolescents generally report higher levels of psychological control relative to parent reports of their own behaviors (Ingoglia et al., 2021; Zheng & Chen, 2025), and their perceptions of increasing psychological control in early to mid-adolescence may correspond with increasing bids for independence (Keijsers & Poulin, 2013). However, little is known about factors influencing change in parents’ reports of their own psychological control. From a cultural standpoint, change in parental psychological control over time may depend on whether this particular behavior is considered normative in the culture (Lansford, 2022). In collectivist contexts, for instance, psychological control may be relatively unchanging and continuous due to valuing of parental authority and filial respect (Chyung et al., 2022). The current study extends the aforementioned limited literature, and addresses a gap in understanding longitudinal trajectories of mother- and father-reported psychological control in diverse cultural contexts.

Pubertal Status

Puberty encompasses the biological changes during the adolescent transition involving complex transformations in the adolescent’s cognitive, psychological, and social functioning (Branje, 2018). These changes instigate a reorganization of the parent-adolescent relationship, such as decreases in emotional closeness and increases in conflict (Keijsers & Poulin, 2013). Lansford and colleagues (2022) found that, across nine cultural groups, greater pubertal maturation at a specific age was associated with lower levels of parental warmth, behavioral control, limit/rule-setting, and knowledge solicitation at that age. The decreasing pattern of these behaviors may characterize how parents respond to the changes in the parent-adolescent relationship associated with the pubertal transition.

Fewer studies have considered how psychological control may be affected by pubertal status and timing, however. Previously cited longitudinal studies of psychological control have interpreted changes in trajectory according to developmental shifts in adolescent independence and disclosure (Rogers et al., 2020; Zhou et al., 2024) but none have examined associations with puberty. One study comparing early-, on-time, and late-maturing Caucasian youth reported that, controlling for age, late-maturers reported lower psychological control from fathers, but perceived higher behavioral control or regulation of their activities and whereabouts (Arim & Shapka, 2008). These results highlight that psychological control is a unique dimension from behavioral control and may be differentially associated with puberty.

Moreover, parents’ responses to pubertal changes in their adolescents are culturally nuanced. Perceptions and meanings of pubertal development are shaped by sociocultural expectations and can intensify gender differences and stereotypes in role identities and sexual behaviors (Natsuaki et al., 2015). For instance, Nigerian and Kenyan mothers tend to grant adult-like privileges to male teens who manifest pubertal changes, but they also express concerns about the onset of romantic and sexual relationships, especially for girls (Bello et al., 2017). These culturally nuanced views of puberty may influence psychologically controlling behaviors in different contexts.

Family Obligations and Psychological Control

Family obligation values refer to the importance and expectations ascribed to particular behaviors that uphold family unity and harmony. These include respecting the authority of elders, fulfilling family responsibilities, and spending time with and caring for family members (Telzer et al., 2015). Such familial expectations vary across cultural contexts and are more strongly evident in collectivist societies, which emphasize interdependence and group harmony over individual autonomy (Hofstede, 2001), and where filial piety is espoused (Ng & Wang, 2019). Expectations surrounding family obligations can shape parent socialization efforts and parent-child interactions (Tsai et al., 2015). For instance, between and within cultures, families with higher expectations to meet family obligations also reported higher than average parental warmth and higher than average control, possibly because warmth and control are means to facilitate closer family ties, and likewise, meet family duties (Lansford et al., 2016).

The importance of family obligations may also cast a different light on psychological control. Dizon and Alampay (2024) found that high levels of family obligation values buffered the positive associations between parental psychological control and internalizing and externalizing behaviors among Filipino adolescents. In the context of high family obligation values, parents’ psychologically controlling behaviors may have been interpreted in accord with the importance of family responsibilities and relationships, hence the moderated impact on adolescent adjustment. The valuing of family obligations may therefore be associated with higher levels and more stable trajectories of parental psychological control, as such parenting can serve as a normative means of encouraging the fulfillment of family duties.

The Present Study

Few studies have examined mother- and father-reported trajectories of psychological control across adolescence, and none have done so with a wide diversity of cultural contexts and considering associations with adolescent pubertal status and family obligation values. This study addresses the following specific questions: (1) What are the trajectories of mother- and father-reported psychological control across ages 12 to 16 or early-to-mid adolescence? (2) Are changes in maternal and paternal psychological control over time related to parental family obligation values and child pubertal status at age 12? (3) Are these trajectories and predictors significantly different across a diverse set of cultures?

A longitudinal investigation of psychological control in adolescence can clarify how normative developmental transitions in the family can shape parent behaviors in different cultural contexts. The study fills a research gap (Scharf & Goldner, 2018) in an extensive literature where psychological control is generally studied as a parenting trait or style constrained to a specific time point. Moreover, these questions are examined in a sample of 12 cultural groups in nine countries, which vary in important sociodemographic and cultural aspects that shape parenting. Participating countries range in the Human Development Index rank (a composite indicator of a country’s health, education, and income status) from 4 to 143 (United Nations Development Programme, 2023). They also vary in collectivism and individualism, broad cultural constructs known to differentiate social behaviors, values, and identities in different societies. For instance, among the countries in this study, the United States has the highest individualism score whereas Colombia, China, and Thailand, are among the least individualist countries (Hofstede, 2001).

Method

Participants

Participants included 1,338 children (M = 8.59 years, SD = .68, range = 7 to 11 years; 50% girls), and their mothers (N = 1,283, M = 37.04 years, SD = 6.51, range = 19 to 70 years) and fathers (N = 1,170, M = 40.19 years, SD = 6.75, range = 22 to 76 years) in the Parenting Across Cultures project. Families were recruited from Shanghai, China (n = 123), Medellín, Colombia (n = 108), Naples, Italy (n = 102), Rome, Italy (n = 111), Zarqa, Jordan (n = 114), Kisumu, Kenya (n = 100), Manila, Philippines (n = 120), Trollhättan/Vänersborg, Sweden (n = 129), Chiang Mai, Thailand (n = 120), and Durham, North Carolina, United States (n = 102 African Americans, n = 99 Hispanic, n = 110 European Americans). Families from the majority ethnic group in each country were recruited; two exceptions were in Kenya where we sampled Luo (3rd largest ethnic group, 13% of population) and in the United States where we sampled equal proportions of European American, African American, and Hispanic families. To ensure economic diversity, we included students from private and public schools and from high- to low-income families, sampled in proportions representative of each recruitment area. Child age and gender did not vary across countries. Most parents were married (80%) and biological parents (96%); nonresidential/non-biological parents also provided data. Mothers (MEducationYears = 12.77, SD = 4.22) and fathers (MEducationYears = 12.90, SD = 4.26) each had approximately a high school education.

Participants were followed annually. Data for the present study were available from waves 5–9 of the study, when children were ages 12–16, on average. Data at age 15 and/or 16 were provided by 84% of the original study participants. Compared to the initial sample, families who provided data at age 15 and/or 16 did not differ on parental education, t(1317) = −0.00, p = .99, or child gender, χ2 (1, N = 1329) = 1.06, p = .30.

Procedures and Measures

Measures were administered in the predominant language of each country, following forward- and back-translation and methodological validation to ensure the conceptual equivalence of the instruments (Erkut, 2010). Interviews lasting 1.5 to 2 hours were conducted each year after parent consent and child assent in participant-chosen locations. Participants chose to complete written or oral measures. Children were given tokens and parents were given modest financial compensation; in other sites, families were entered into drawings for prizes, or modest financial contributions were made to children’s schools. Procedures were approved by Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) in each country. Supplement Table 1 lists the descriptive statistics for demographic characteristics and measures.

Psychological Control.

When adolescents were ages 12, 13, 14, 15, and 16, mothers and fathers self-reported their psychological control (Barber, 1996). Parents rated 7 items on a 4-point Likert scale (1=strongly disagree, 4=strongly agree) including, “I say that my child shouldn’t argue with adults” and “When my child gets a poor grade in school, I make him/her feel guilty”). An average score was created for mothers (wave 5 α =.75) and fathers (wave 5 α =.75) for each available wave of data collection.

Pubertal Status.

Pubertal status was assessed among participants at age 12 using the Pubertal Development Scale (PDS; Petersen et al., 1988), a well-validated self-report measure. Four items ask about perceived pubertal changes in skin, body hair, facial hair (for boys), breast growth (for girls), and voice (for boys). Each item has four options, scored 1 (has not yet started) through 4 (definitely completed). For girls, a yes or no question about onset of menarche is included (1 = no and 4 = yes). In line with prior multicultural studies using this measure (Lansford et al., 2021), standardized item scores were averaged to create a continuous score for physical maturation ranging from 0 (puberty has not started) to 3 (puberty seems complete). A prior study using these data used the alignment method and found that the puberty measure demonstrated invariance across most groups and time points, falling well below the 25% threshold indicating approximate measurement invariance across groups (Asparouhov & Muthén, 2014; Lansford et al., 2021).

Family Obligations.

Mothers and fathers completed the respect for family and current assistance scales of the family obligations measure developed by Fuligni et al. (1999). The measure includes 7 items assessing views about the importance of respecting the authority of elders in the family (e.g., “Please rate how important it is to you that your child treat you with great respect”; 1 = not important to 5 = very important) and 11 items assessing parents’ expectations regarding how often children should help and spend time with the family (e.g., “Please rate how often your child is expected to help out around the house”; 1 = almost never to 5 = almost always). These 18 items were averaged to create a composite scale for each reporter (wave 5 αs = .66-.86 for mothers, wave 5 αs = .76-.87 for fathers).

Demographic Control Variables.

Child gender and socioeconomic status were included in the study analyses as covariates. A composite score of SES when the youth participants were 10 years old was created through an average of the standardized scores of mothers’ and fathers’ education and the gross annual household income.

Analysis Plan

We estimated the trajectories of mother and father-reported psychological control from ages 12–16 using multiple group latent growth curve (LGC) modeling in Mplus v.8.0 (Muthén & Muthén, 2017), using a robust maximum likelihood estimator to accommodate non-normally distributed indicators. The maximum likelihood estimator uses all cases for which exogenous variables are available, treating other data as missing at random (MAR). The MAR assumption is not testable, but, failing a theoretical model of missingness, yields less bias than other ad hoc forms of handling missing data while retaining maximum power. Data were missing on psychological control variables for 176 of the 1334 mothers (13%) and 354 of the 1234 fathers (29%).

We estimated separate models for mother and father psychological control. For each, we estimated an iterative series of latent growth curve models, conducting a 12-culture multiple-group model for mothers and an 11-culture multiple group model for fathers, because age 16 father-reported psychological control was not collected in Kenya. We prioritized retaining the Kenyan site over the ability to run a matched parallel-process model, given the relative scarcity of longitudinal parenting data from East African samples in this literature. As a result, we are able to descriptively compare mother- and father-reported trajectories and predictors, but cannot statistically test these differences.

We estimated a series of unconditional multiple-group LGC models to examine the nature of ages 12–16 mother-reported and father-reported psychological control. We compared four different functional forms of growth to determine which best captured changes in psychological control over time: 1) an intercept-only LGC model that allowed mother-reported and father-reported psychological control to vary at child age 12, but the rate of change (slope) was fixed, 2) linear LGC models where mother-reported and father-reported psychological control were allowed to vary in their intercept and slope, and slope was assumed to be constant (linear) over time, 3) a quadratic LGC model where mother-reported and father-reported psychological control were allowed to vary in their intercept and slope, and a quadratic term was estimated allowing slope to accelerate or decelerate over time, and 4) a piecewise linear LGC model with a knot point at age 14. Age 14 represents the transition from early to middle adolescence and the mid-point of the age range in this study.

To test whether the relations differ by cultural site, we estimated models for mother-report and father-report that constrained all the parameters to be equal across sites (intercept mean, slope mean, intercept variance, slope variance, intercept, and slope correlation). Good model fit is defined by a non-significant chi square test, CFI and TLI greater than or equal to .95, and RMSEA less than or equal to 0.06 (Hu & Bentler, 1999). If good model fit was not achieved, modification indices were consulted to release parameters in specific sites that would be theoretically plausible to free, and used chi-square difference testing to ensure releasing the parameter did not significantly worsen model fit. This iterative process was continued until the chi-square test comparing the constrained and the unconstrained model was not significant, indicating that the model freeing the parameter fits the data significantly worse than the more parsimonious fixed model. Once we found the best fit for each functional form (intercept only, linear, quadratic, and piecewise), we tested fit among nested models with chi-square likelihood ratio tests and retained the best fitting model. Fit of the quadratic and piecewise linear models was compared using the Akaike Information Criterion (AIC) and Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC) indices, because these models were not nested (Bollen & Curran, 2006). The model with the lower AIC/BIC values, indicating better fit to the data, was selected.

Once we determined the best functional form for mother-report and father-report of psychological control, we constrained the residuals for each psychological control item to be the same within each site (homoscedastic error residuals) and then tested them to make sure they did not significantly worsen model fit. We then investigated our second and third questions by evaluating whether pubertal status and family obligations at age 12 predicted trajectories of mother and father psychological control in diverse cultural contexts. We did so by iteratively estimating a series of conditional LGC models. We added the time-invariant predictors of pubertal status and family obligations at age 12 and the covariates of child gender and SES predicting the slopes and intercepts of the final unconditional model. All continuous predictors were standardized to a grand mean of 0 and a SD of 1 to yield easily interpretable relations between predictors and outcomes. We initially constrained these paths to be equal across groups, using modification indices to release paths and using chi-square difference testing to ensure releasing the parameter did not significantly worsen model fit. Because we wanted to retain the Kenyan sample using mother reports, we were not able to run a parallel process model with both mothers and fathers. Therefore, we are only able to describe differences between the results for mothers and fathers, but not test whether the trajectories and/or predictors of trajectories are statistically significantly different for mothers and fathers.

Results

Across cultural sites, mothers’ and fathers’ reports of psychological control followed a broadly similar overall pattern: significant linear declines from ages 12 to 16 in most sites, whereas a smaller subset of sites where trajectories remained stable (mother-reports: Kenya, the Philippines, and the U.S.-Hispanic group; father-reports: Jordan). The predictors of these trajectories diverged by reporter. Father-reported family obligation values predicted the rate of decline across all sites, while neither pubertal status nor family obligation values predicted mother-reported trajectories in any site. The succeeding sections present the full results by reporter.

We found that a linear model fit best for both mother and father reports (Mother: RMSEA=.06 90% CI: .03, .08, CFI=.97, TLI=.98; Father: RMSEA=.07 90% CI: .04, .08, CFI=.96 TLI=.97). The final conditional models for mothers and fathers also had good fit, though the father model had slightly low CFI and TLI (Mother: RMSEA=.05 90% CI: .04, .07 CFI=.94, TLI=.95; Father RMSEA=.06 90% CI: .04, .07, CFI=.89, TLI=.92). Table 1 shows the intercept and slope estimates for the conditional model for mothers and fathers by site; full model estimates, including covariate paths, variance components, and R2 statistics, are presented in Supplementary Table 2. Supplementary Figure 1 presents the mother and father estimated trajectories by site.

Table 1.

Intercept and Slope Estimates (Standard Errors) for Multiple-Group Growth Models by Site, Mothers and Fathers

Site (N) Mothers Fathers
Intercept Slope Intercept Slope
China (123) 2.12 (.05)*** −.04 (.01)*** 2.14 (.04)*** −.03 (.01)***
Colombia (108) 2.93 (.04)*** −.04 (.01)*** 2.80 (.06)*** −.08 (.02)***
Italy–Naples (100) 2.72 (.06)*** −.04 (.01)*** 2.35 (.03)*** −.03 (.01)***
Italy–Rome (109) 2.35 (.03)*** −.04 (.01)*** 2.35 (.03)*** −.03 (.01)***
Jordan (114) 2.91 (.04)*** −.05 (.02)** 2.86 (.03)*** −.01 (.01)
Kenya (100) 2.35 (.03)*** −.01 (.04) N/A N/A
Philippines (120) 2.55 (.04)*** −.00 (.01) 2.60 (.05)*** −.03 (.01)***
Sweden (129) 1.89 (.04)*** −.04 (.01)*** 1.90 (.04)*** −.03 (.01)***
Thailand (120) 2.35 (.03)*** −.04 (.01)*** 2.35 (.03)*** −.03 (.01)***
US–African American (102) 2.35 (.03)*** −.04 (.01)*** 2.35 (.03)*** −.03 (.01)***
US–European American (110) 2.00 (.04)*** −.05 (.01)*** 1.94 (.05)*** −.05 (.01)**
US–Hispanic (99) 2.35 (.03)*** .03 (.02) 2.40 (.03)*** −.03 (.01)***
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*

p < .05.

**

p < .01.

***

p < .001.

Note. Kenya was excluded from the father-reported model (age-16 father-reported psychological control was not collected at this site). Full model estimates, including covariate paths, factor variances, the intercept–slope correlation, and R2 statistics by wave, are presented in Supplementary Table 2.

Trajectories of Mother-Reported Psychological Control

Controlling for the covariates, all the sites had significant intercepts. Five of the sites (Rome, Kenya, Thailand, African American, and U.S. Hispanic mother samples) had the same intercept (2.35), while the lowest intercept was reported by the Sweden sample (1.89) and the highest intercept was among mothers in the Colombia site (2.93). All had significant negative slopes in psychological control except the Kenya, Philippines, and U.S. Hispanic sites, which did not show significant change in psychological control over time. Seven of the sites had the same significant negative slope (−.04), while the reduction of psychological control over time was larger for the European American (−.05) and Jordanian (−.05) samples. The correlation between intercept and slope was only significant among the Sweden sample (r = −.01), where mothers who started with a higher level of psychological control decreased at a greater rate.

Neither pubertal status at age 12 nor valuing of family obligations was associated with the levels and trajectories of mother-reported psychological control in all sites. Among covariates, the only significant predictor of the intercept was SES. Higher SES predicted lower intercept in all contexts (−.12) except Jordan, where it was not significant; the association is also significant but larger for the Colombia site (−.27). On the other hand, SES significantly negatively predicted the slope only for the sample of mothers in Colombia (−.04), where the slope for those with an SES one SD above the mean (−.07) was significantly higher than those at the mean (−.04) and one SD below the mean (−.03). This indicates that mother-reported psychological control decreases faster for those with higher SES. According to the R-square statistics, the covariates and predictors accounted for a significant proportion of the variance in the intercept in all sites except Jordan. The covariates and predictors did not significantly account for any of the variance in the slopes in any of the sites.

Trajectories of Father-Reported Psychological Control

Controlling for the covariates, all the sites had significant intercepts. Five of the sites (Naples, Rome, Thailand, African American, U.S. Hispanic father samples) had the same intercept (2.35). The other intercepts ranged from lowest among the sample of fathers in Sweden (1.90) to the highest in the Jordan site (2.86). All the sites had significant negative slopes, except for Jordan, which had a nonsignificant slope (−.01). Eight of the sites had the same significant negative slope (−.03). The average decrease in psychological control over time was greater in the European American (−.05) and Colombia (−.08) sites. None of the sites had a significant correlation between intercept and slope, meaning that initial levels of psychological control were not correlated with the rate of change in psychological control.

Among the hypothesized predictors, pubertal status was a significant predictor of the intercepts in the China and Colombia sites. For the sample in China, more advanced pubertal status at age 12 was associated with higher levels of psychological control at age 12 (.08), while in the Colombia site, the association was negative with higher pubertal development at age 12 associated with lower levels of psychological control (−.15). Father-reported adolescent family obligation was significantly associated with linear slope in all sites (.012). Though the numbers are slightly different based on different intercepts and slopes across some sites, the rate of decrease in father-reported psychological control is lowest among those with high levels of father-reported child family obligation. For instance, for the father sample in Naples, the slope for those with a level of family obligations one SD above the mean (−.02) was lower than those at the mean (−.03) and one SD below the mean (−.04).

Among covariates, the child being female was associated with a lower level of psychological control at age 12 in all sites (−.07). Higher SES also predicted lower father-reported psychological control at age 12 in all sites (−.08), including Jordan, where the equivalent association was not significant for mothers. Additionally, SES was a predictor of latent slope in the Colombia sample (−.05), the same pattern as the mother sample in Colombia, where the greatest rate of decrease in father-reported psychological control was among those with SES one SD above the mean (−.12), compared to those at the mean (−.08) and one SD below the mean (−.03). According to the R-square statistics, the covariates and predictors accounted for a significant proportion of the variance in the intercept in all sites; they did not significantly account for any of the variance in the slopes except in the Colombia site.

Discussion

In most sites, mean levels of parent-reported psychological control at age 12 fell in the lower half of the response scale (corresponding to “somewhat disagree”). Mother and father intercepts were relatively lower for the sample in Sweden, aligned with values emphasizing individualism and self-expression in that cultural context (Gurdal & Sorbring, 2024). Age 12 psychological control was relatively higher among mothers and fathers in the sites of Jordan and Colombia (at levels corresponding to “somewhat agree” on the scale); both contexts are known for collectivistic family norms (Al-Hassan, 2025; Di Giunta et al., 2025).

With respect to change across early to mid-adolescence, we found a normative trend of linear declines in mother- and father-reported psychologically controlling behavior from ages 12–16 in most cultural sites. This result is consistent with other longitudinal studies indicating declines in other parental control behaviors across this period such as behavioral control, rule-setting, and knowledge solicitation, as reported by both adolescents and parents (e.g., Keijsers & Poulin, 2013; Lansford et al., 2021). The decrease in psychological control across adolescence may reflect the changes in the parent-adolescent relationship as adolescents continue to individuate, develop in volition, and manage the information shared with their parents (Keijsers & Poulin, 2013). Parents may be less inclined, or perhaps have decreased opportunity, to demonstrate psychologically controlling behaviors (e.g. constraining children’s opinions, withdrawal of affection), given shifts in parental knowledge, adolescent maturity, and relationship mutuality. The normative decline in psychological control reported here complements the research on its generally negative effects on youths’ development across cultures, suggesting that increasing or persistently high levels of control are less adaptive. We note that the current results differ from earlier reports of stable or non-changing trajectories of parent-reported psychological control (i.e. Barber et al., 2005; Meter et al., 2019), but differences may be due to disparities in the age period under study: in Barber et al., parents of two cohorts ages 11–13 and 14–17 were separately studied; for Meter et al., parents reported on their behaviors when children were 15–17 years old. Among other analytical differences, decline in psychological control may have been more apparent across the wider age range of 12–16 years.

In contrast with the linear declining trend, mother-reports from the Kenya, the Philippines, and the US-Hispanic groups; and father-reports from Jordan, did not show significant change in psychological control over time. Without precluding within-culture variation, these contexts have been characterized as employing particular cultural norms to manage children’s behavior, which may undergird the continuity in psychological control from ages 12 to 16. For instance, Filipino parents more strongly value children’s obedience versus autonomy compared to caregivers in the other countries and refer to hiya (shame or propriety) in regulating behaviors that may reflect negatively on the family (Alampay & Jocson, 2011). Similarly, Halgunseth et al. (2006) described parental control as rooted in the Latino cultural values of familismo and respeto, and the use of consejos (sermonizing) as a means of moralizing and influencing children. Mothers may have more opportunities to employ such practices as they typically spend more time in daily caregiving; however, as mothers’ and fathers’ models were estimated separately, we cannot formally test whether this reporter difference is statistically reliable.

Overall, with few exceptions, psychological control is reported by parents in different cultural contexts to be normatively decreasing across early to middle adolescence. This diverse and longitudinal perspective adds to recent work on psychological control that emphasizes its dynamic nature. Understanding discontinuities in psychological control over time nuances the strong evidence that psychological control negatively affects child and adolescent development. For instance, increasing trajectories of psychological control have been found to coincide with increases in emotional distress among adolescents in China and the United States (Xiong et al., 2022; Zhou et al., 2024), with evidence of reciprocal parent-child effects driving changes in psychological control over time. The concomitant outcomes and reciprocal patterns in the trajectories of psychological control need to be further studied in more diverse cultural samples. Likewise, there is a need to investigate the outcomes associated with continuity and stability in psychological control in families between and within cultures.

Family Obligation Values and Pubertal Status as Predictors

Family obligation values were associated with the trajectory of psychological control in all cultural sites, but only for the father-report models. Specifically, the slower rates of decline in psychological control across adolescence were evident for fathers reporting higher valuing of family obligations in their adolescent children. Notably, the magnitude of this association did not vary across sites: a given increase in father-reported family obligation values was associated with the same estimated attenuation in rate of decline in every site, from more individualist contexts (e.g., Sweden, the United States) to more collectivist ones (e.g., Jordan, the Philippines). This suggests that, at least among fathers, the strength of the relation between family obligation values and continuity in psychological control may not be moderated by cultural norms. Family obligations represent fathers’ expectations that their children respect authority, spend time with the family, and fulfill duties that contribute to family members’ welfare (Tsai et al., 2015). Psychological control in the context of such values may be a means for fathers to promote the fulfillment of obligations, hence, the relatively lower rates of decrease compared to fathers with average or lower obligation values. Consistent with Lansford et al. (2016), higher levels of control within and between families across cultural sites were associated with higher expectations of family obligations.

That this association was only evident for fathers in the current study is possibly related to the different parenting roles and characteristics of mothers and fathers. In a systematic review of three decades of research on differences in the behaviors of mothers and fathers across 15 countries, mothers were characterized as more responsive and behaviorally controlling, whereas fathers were more restrictive and coercive in their control (Yaffe, 2020). Alternatively, this father-specific result may be due to shared method variance, as family obligation values and psychological control were reported by the same parent, rather than a substantive difference in how family obligation values shape mothers’ and fathers’ parenting. Cross-informant designs would help clarify whether this pattern reflects a substantive gender difference.

Across cultural sites, adolescents’ self-reported pubertal status was generally not associated with the intercept and slope for mother- and father-reported psychological control. Two exceptions are that more advanced adolescent pubertal status at age 12 was associated with higher Chinese father-reported psychological control, but conversely, with lower Colombian father-reported psychological control. These two contexts represent how the extent of pubertal maturity may be associated with greater attempts at control in some contexts, but lower psychological control in others. We note that this association emerged in only two of the sites, and only for father-reported models; thus these opposite-direction findings should be interpreted with caution. With this caveat, the results suggest two parental responses to the same developmental transition. Physical maturation may signal to parents that their adolescent is becoming more capable of independent judgment, prompting parents to relax control, consistent with findings that parents extend more privileges to physically maturing teens (Bello et al., 2017) and reduce behavioral control as puberty advances (Lansford et al., 2022). Alternatively, physical maturation is also associated with adolescents’ increasing bids for independence and withholding of information from parents (Keijsers & Poulin, 2013), which may prompt some parents to reassert control rather than relinquish it. Which response predominates may depend on factors not examined here, such as the gender of the adolescent (Bello et al., 2017; Natsuaki et al., 2015) or the broader quality of the parent-adolescent relationship. These possible interpretations of a pattern observed in two sites must be examined in future research. Moreover, whether these site-specific results plausibly reflect a genuine difference in how fathers and mothers respond to their children’s physical maturation requires more formal statistical analysis in a parallel process model.

SES and Gender Covariates

Among covariates, higher SES predicted lower mother- and father-reported psychological control at age 12 across all sites except in the Jordan sample (for mother report). This is consistent with substantial literature linking parental education and socioeconomic resources to less authoritarian, more autonomy-supportive parenting practices (Hoff, Laursen, & Tardif, 2002). Higher parental education (a component of our SES composite) may afford more exposure to information about adolescent development and more progressive views of discipline and interactions that favor autonomy support and lower control. At the same time, lower SES is linked to greater parental stress, which in turn predicts harsher, more controlling parenting (Conger et al., 2010). Aligned with these arguments is the association between SES and slope, significant only in the Colombia sample, where psychological control declined more steeply among higher-SES families for mothers and fathers. As this pattern was confined to a single site, we interpret it cautiously rather than as evidence of a broader cultural mechanism; replication in additional samples would be needed before drawing firmer conclusions about SES-related change over time in this context.

With respect to adolescent gender, father-reported psychological control was lower for girls than boys at age 12, an association not found for mothers. This direction is consistent with meta-analytic evidence that parents are, on average, slightly more controlling with boys than girls, though this effect tends to be small (Endendijk et al., 2016), and with broader evidence that parents tend to favor daughters in their general treatment of children (Jensen & Jorgensen-Wells, 2025). Notably, neither meta-analysis found fathers to differentiate by child gender more than mothers do. Given this, and the separate analysis for mother and father models, we are cautious about interpreting the father-specific pattern in our own data as reflecting a substantive difference between parents.

Limitations and Recommendations

A primary limitation of this study is statistical power. Site-level samples were modest, and complex multiple-group models are demanding of sample size, particularly for detecting predictors of the slope (Fan, 2003; Hertzog et al., 2008). This is relevant to our finding that predictors did not significantly account for slope variance in the mother-reported model in any site, which should not be read as evidence that no such predictors exist. It is also relevant to the asymmetry between mother- and father-reported models, in which the father model showed more significant slope predictors; this pattern may reflect a true difference between reporters, but could also reflect chance given the number of site-specific paths tested, or differences in model fit between the two models that we are unable to fully disentangle.

Moreover, the sample from each site is not representative of the country, which limits culture-based generalizations. The findings reported here, especially where there are differences or effects in specific sites, cannot be said to apply to the country or cultural context as a whole, but only to the communities included in the sample. Still, the diversity of the families in our study allows for less studied populations to be represented in our findings. Research on parenting should continue to involve diverse and representative samples of mothers, fathers, and youth, especially for variables such as psychological control, in order to clarify the cultural commonalities of adaptive and negative parenting behaviors and trajectories. More culturally grounded understanding of psychological control can also inform interventions with diverse families that seek to ameliorate its negative consequences (e.g. Dizon & Alampay, 2024).

We utilized parent reports of psychological control, differentiating mothers and fathers, thereby adding to the literature that has largely focused on adolescent reports. However, self-reported measures of parenting may involve social desirability bias, and parents tend to indicate less psychological control than their adolescent children do (Ingoglia et al., 2021; Zheng & Chen, 2025). Moreover, we recognize that adolescents’ perceptions of their parents is particularly impactful on their development and discrepancies between parent and youth perceptions of psychological control predict adolescents’ lower satisfaction of their autonomy and relational needs (Ingoglia et al., 2021). Thus, investigating both child- and parent-reported psychological control in diverse samples would broaden understanding of the nature and effects of discrepancies in experiences of control. Both child and parent perspectives are necessary to reflect the transactional nature of parent-child dynamics (Scharf & Goldner, 2018; Xiong et al., 2022).

Our study is likewise limited in its consideration of the child characteristics (i.e., gender was treated as a covariate) that are associated with levels and change in psychological control. Our measure of pubertal status, assessed at age 12, does not allow us to distinguish between status effects, in which the degree of physical/hormonal development relates to outcomes, and timing effects, in which being early or late relative to same-age peers carries its own psychosocial consequences, independent of absolute developmental level (Mendle et al., 2019). Because status was assessed at a single time point among same-age peers, our measure cannot determine whether it is the adolescent’s absolute developmental level or their relative standing compared to peers that is responsible for any association with psychological control. Future research can disaggregate these mechanisms more clearly. It is also worth unpacking and measuring the relational transitions in adolescence that are thought to instigate the changes in psychological control that are inferred here, such as adolescent disclosure, parent-child conflict, or parenting distress (Scharf & Goldner, 2018).

As mothers’ and fathers’ models were estimated separately, apparent differences between reporters, such as the association between family obligation values and slope observed only for fathers, were not directly tested against one another for statistical significance, and should be interpreted cautiously given the possibility of shared method variance when predictor and outcome share an informant.

Despite the aforementioned limitations, our study contributes significantly to the substantial research on psychological control. Utilizing the most diverse sample of mothers and fathers to date, we show that parent-reported psychological control normatively declines across the ages of 12 to 16. Whereas there are some sites that exhibit more continuity than change, especially as reported by mothers, the levels and trajectories of psychological control demonstrate notable consistency across the cultural sites in this study.

Supplementary Material

Supplementary Table 1
Supplementary Table 2
Supplementary Figure 1

Acknowledgements:

We are grateful to the families who shared their time and participation with us, the Parenting Across Cultures group, and our community partners.

Funding:

This research was funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Grant RO1-HD054805 and the Intramural Research Program of the NIH/NICHD (Z99 HD999999) and Fogarty International Center Grant RO3-TW008141. This research also was supported by National Institute on Drug Abuse Grant P30 DA023026, and an International Research Fellowship at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, London, United Kingdom, funded by the European Research Council Institute for the Microeconomic Analysis of Public Policy, grant number ES/T014334/1.

Footnotes

Conflict of Interest Statement: There are no conflicts of interest to report.

Preregistration: This study was not preregistered. The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request. Code for analyses is available upon request.

Data Availability Statement:

Data may be made available upon request from the corresponding author.

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Associated Data

This section collects any data citations, data availability statements, or supplementary materials included in this article.

Supplementary Materials

Supplementary Table 1
NIHMS2218592-supplement-Supplementary_Table_1.docx (27.7KB, docx)
Supplementary Table 2
NIHMS2218592-supplement-Supplementary_Table_2.docx (27.8KB, docx)
Supplementary Figure 1
NIHMS2218592-supplement-Supplementary_Figure_1.docx (395.1KB, docx)

Data Availability Statement

Data may be made available upon request from the corresponding author.

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