Perceptions of parenting styles and their associations with mental health and life satisfaction among urban Indonesian adolescents

The study aimed at investigating the association between maternal and paternal parenting styles and psychological well-being among Indonesian adolescents. The Parental Authority Questionnaire (PAQ), General Health Questionnaire-12 (GHQ-12), and the Brief Multidimensional Students’ Life Satisfaction Scale, were administered to 500 adolescents. We were unable to replicate the three-factor solution of the PAQ using confirmatory factor analysis. The permissive subscale demonstrated poor psychometric properties; it was therefore not included in any further analysis. Mothers were perceived to be more authoritative than fathers; on the other hand, fathers were perceived to be more authoritarian than mothers. Both maternal and paternal authoritative parenting styles were positively associated with outcomes. Authoritarian parenting was not associated with any outcome. Scores computed to represent perceived differences between maternal and paternal use of various parenting styles were associated with reported GHQ-12 and life satisfaction scores. Our results confirm Western findings on the positive effects of authoritative parenting, but do not replicate the negative associations of authoritarian parenting. Future studies that examine different parenting styles at the construct level are needed to elucidate the association between parenting styles and adolescent psychological functioning in the Indonesian and other similar contexts