A Daily Examination of the Moderating Role of Adolescents’ Coping in Associations Between Psychologically Controlling Parenting and Adolescents’ Maladjustment

To explain why there is substantial heterogeneity in the degree to which adolescents suffer from psychologically controlling parenting, it is important to take into account adolescents’ active contribution to the socialization processes and to their coping with controlling parenting in particular. This study aimed to examine whether adolescents’ coping with controlling parenting (i.e., oppositional defiance, compulsive compliance, negotiation, and accommodation) moderated associations between psychologically controlling parenting, adolescents’ experiences of psychological need frustration, and their internalizing and externalizing problems. A total of 161 adolescents (M age = 15.56 years; SD age = 1.14; 61.5% female) and either their mother or their father participated in 7-day diary study. As expected, accommodation played an adaptive role, thereby buffering within-person (daily) associations between psychologically controlling parenting, adolescents’ need frustration, and subsequent problems. Unexpectedly, compulsive compliance played a similar adaptive role. Overall, the moderating effects of coping were rather limited, suggesting that adolescents’ coping can alter the daily negative consequences associated with psychologically controlling parenting only to a certain extent.