Parental Psychological Needs, Parenting Practices, and Adolescent Internalizing Mood in Daily Life

Autonomy-supportive parenting is essential for positive developmental outcomes for youth whereas psychological control can have detrimental effects. When parents’ psychological needs are met, they are more likely to show autonomy-supportive parenting; and when parents report greater psychological need frustration, they are more likely to parent with psychological control. We tested how parental psychological needs can predict adolescent internalizing mood through parenting practices in daily life. Parent-adolescent dyads (N = 171) completed daily diaries for 14 days to rate parental psychological needs, parenting practices, and adolescent internalizing mood. We conducted multilevel mediation analyses (i.e., 1-1-1 and 2-2-2 design) to examine the effect of parental psychological needs on adolescent internalizing mood through parent parenting practices. When parents’ daily psychological needs were met, they practiced more supportive parenting practices in daily life, which in turn was associated with better adolescent mood. Most of these mediation effects were not found when examining long-term characteristics. Our findings point towards the importance of disentangling day-to-day fluctuations in behaviors and experiences than to long-term associations between them in families’ daily lives to better understand family dynamics and adolescent well-being.