Guilt Trips and Love Withdrawal: Does Mothers' Use of Psychological Control Predict Depressive Symptoms among African American Adolescents?*

Abstract: This study examined the effects of maternal psychological control on the depressive symptoms of 152 lower socioeconomic status African American adolescents. After controlling for the effects of other parenting practices, psychological control had a strong positive relationship with girls' depressive symptoms, but none for boys, even though the 2 groups reported the same levels of psychological control. As predicted, girls' sense of control and agency completely mediated the effects of psychological control. Those who reported higher levels of psychological control reported lower self-control and higher depressive symptoms. It was concluded that girls are probably more aware of the covert messages and more concerned for their mother's feelings than are boys. Thus, girls may be more willing than boys to sacrifice their own identity; however, there may be psychological consequences for their sacrifice. Key Words: adolescent mental health, African American families, depression, parenting, psychological control. Parental psychological control involves the use of parenting strategies such as love withdrawal, psycho- logical intrusiveness, and guilt induction to control children's behavior (Barber & Harmon, 2002; Smetana & Daddis, 2002). As opposed to direct forms of behavioral control such as monitoring of adolescent whereabouts, psychological control is more covert and manipulative. Previous studies with European Americans have shown that psychological control is related to adolescent well-being (Barber, 2002), but the findings have not been as clear among the few studies that included African Ameri- can youth (Bean, Barber, & Crane, 2006). One problem with previous studies may be that they assumed the cultural significance of various compo- nents of the psychological control construct were the same in African Americans and European Americans (Krishnakumar, Buehler, & Barber, 2004). Further- more, previous studies have rarely examined gender differences among African American youth. The purpose of the current study was to assess the effects of psychological control on the psychological wellbeing of African American adolescents using a modified version of traditional measures and assessing the moderating effects of gender. A further purpose was to test the underlying hypothesis that psychological control relates to the psychological well-being of adolescents because it is associated with a reduction in their sense of agency or self-control. The concept of parental control has always been controversial in parenting research (Baumrind, 1971; Grolnick, 2003). Implicit in early debates was the notion that parental control and parental support were at opposite ends of a continuum. However, a series of scale construction and factor analytic studies has shown that not only are parental support and parental control two relatively orthogonal dimensions of parenting but parental control is also more complex and multidimensional than previously thought (Barber, Olsen, & Shagle, 1994; Baumrind; Schaefer, 1965; Steinberg, Mounts, Lamborn, & Dornbusch, 1991). These studies showed that parents' attempts to control children included at least two factors. Behavioral control is the directive factor expressed as the use of rules, monitoring, and limit setting. The other factor, psychological control, is more covert and includes psychological intrusiveness, controlling through guilt, and withdrawing expressions of love. The results of hundreds of empirical investigations have consistently shown that parental support is positively and strongly related to child and adolescent well-being across a wide variety of domains (Barber, Stolz, & Olsen, 2005; Galambos, Barker, & Almeida, 2003). Behavioral control, when measured separately from psychological control, is usually found to be a strong predictor of academic achievement and lower externalizing problems (Barber et al., 2005; Kilgore, Snyder, & Lentz, 2000). …