Baton Rouge Families & Teens Project

Project Rationale and Goals

For much of the past century, scientists from a number of disciplines have been studying the interpersonal relationships between parents and their children. To date, the effort has resulted in a wealth of knowledge in terms of (a) understanding, describing, and categorizing behaviors that parents engage in as they raise their children and (b) determining whether, and under what conditions, these behaviors are associated with child and adolescent developmental outcomes. However, it remains unclear how parents come to engage in specific behaviors or why parents choose to employ particular parenting techniques. Moreover, researchers have yet to identify general principles for describing optimal and less optimal shifts in parenting strategies as children become adolescents.

The goal of the Baton Rouge Families & Teens Project is to elucidate fundamental developmental and interactional processes to understand changes in the parent-child relationship and in two specific parenting practices (i.e., parental monitoring and psychological control) during the early adolescent years. The study will focus on monitoring and psychological control because these two parenting practices have been identified as developmentally relevant and likely to be transformed in early adolescence. Moreover, monitoring and psychological control are associated with a range of problems (e.g., irregular school attendance and poor performance, delinquency, drug use, promiscuous sexual activity) that interfere with adolescents’ physical and mental health and development. A greater understanding of the antecedents and influences on monitoring and psychological control, as well as the ways in which parents adjust their parenting to the developing needs of their children and adolescents, will provide valuable information for parents and professionals interested in facilitating children’s and adolescents’ behavioral, social, and emotional adaptation. Specifically, this project will help to identify families who are likely to experience difficulties during the transition to adolescence, barriers to more effective parenting, and strategies that may be used to improve parenting as children become adolescents. Dissemination efforts will emphasize implications and provide recommendations for prevention and intervention programs for parents of adolescents.