Autonomy-Supporting and Controlling Parenting Behaviours: The Role of Context and Performance-Approach Goals

Abstract

Parenting behaviours play a central role in shaping children’s motivation, self-regulation, and responses to challenge. As young children encounter difficult tasks, parents are often in the role of providing guidance, making parental behaviours within these interactions particularly important for the development of children’s autonomy. Despite the abundance of parenting advice available through popular media, much of this guidance is conflicting, vague, or lacks strong empirical support. Drawing on self-determination theory, the present study aims to examine how individual and contextual factors interact to give rise to different parenting behaviours, which in turn influence children’s independent behaviours. Specifically, we examine how an experimental manipulation of parents’ goal orientation (i.e., outcome- vs. process-oriented) as well as individual differences in parent achievement goals (i.e., performance-approach goals) influence parents’ level of autonomy-supportive and controlling behaviours. Further, we observe whether these parenting behaviours relate to children’s persistence in a subsequent independent task. Eighty parents and their children (aged 4-5 years old) participated in a challenging puzzle task. Overall, parents in the outcome-oriented condition engaged in more autonomy-supporting and controlling behaviours during the task. As well, parents with stronger performance-approach goals were more likely to engage in controlling behaviours. Mediation analyses revealed that controlling parenting was associated with lower levels of subsequent child persistence and served as a mechanism linking parents’ performance-approach goals to children’s persistence. Broadly, the results highlighted the importance of considering both contextual and internal influences on parenting behaviour. Implications for theory and practice are also discussed.