The Differential Effects of Parental Style on Parental Legitimacy and Domain Specific Adolescent Rule-Violating Behaviors

This study examined whether parental legitimacy served as a mediator in the relation between parenting styles (authoritative, authoritarian, permissive) and adolescent engagement in four domain-specific rule-violating behaviors (RVB: relational aggression, assault, theft, substance use). A total of 708 middle school and high school students from the New Hampshire Youth Study were surveyed four times every six months for the current study. Using generalized structural equation modeling, results demonstrated that parental legitimacy was a mediator of authoritative parenting style, but was not a significant or consistent mediator for authoritarian and permissive parenting styles, with RVBs. Parental legitimacy fully mediated the relation between authoritative parenting and assault, theft, and relational aggression, but only partially mediated the relation with substance use. This finding suggests that parental legitimacy might be more important in certain domains of behavior than others. Moveover, this pattern mostly persisted when examining changes in RVB overtime and changes in parental legitimacy as a mediator. The implications of parental authority and why adolescents may engage in certain RVB over others, as well as how developmental factors are accounted for in legal socialization, are discussed.