Mama Don’t Preach: Comparing Mothers’ and Adolescents’ Perceptions of Maternal Guilt Induction

Parental guilt induction is a common parenting practice used to develop a sense of morality within children during development. However, literature on moral development versus literature on parenting establish there to be distinct perceptions of the effects of guilt induction across their individual domains. Rote and Smetana (2017) examined how child appraisals and the projected effects of hypothetical guilt inductive statements vary based on the topics over how guilt is induced and the way it is expressed. This study builds upon Rote and Smetana (2017) by evaluating child and parent perceptions of the same vignettes. This comparison is necessary as child and parent perceptions of parenting are moderately correlated, with a correlation coefficient around .28 (Hou et al., 2020), and parents and teens differ as to the amount of authority they believe parents possess to regulate various issues (Smetana, 2011). This study included 123 mother-adolescent dyads (246 participants total) from the Tampa Bay area who separately evaluated 12 hypothetical vignettes depicting parental guilt induction. Mothers’ and teens’ evaluations of guilt inductive statements were compared using a repeated measures ANOVA, taking into account guilt induction topic and method of expression. Mothers’ and teens’ evaluations of guilt induction differed somewhat, partially depending on the topic and form of guilt induction considered. Discussion focuses on the factors leading to similarity and differences in parents and adolescents’ perceptions of guilt induction