Abstract
<p>Background: Despite decades of research on parenting, it remains unclear why the same practices benefit some adolescents but not others. Prior research on moderators that could explain heterogeneous parenting effects has typically examined just one or a few potential factors and yielded mixed findings. The present study cast a wider net, evaluating 129 potential moderators to identify the most important determinants of heterogeneity in within-family parenting effects on adolescents’ internalizing problems. Methods: Participants were 7,928 adolescents and their 7,840 mothers and 6,777 fathers enrolled in the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC). Parents reported on parenting (warmth, inductive reasoning, low angry parenting) and adolescents reported on internalizing problems for four biannual waves (age 10-16). Time-lagged within-family parenting effects were estimated using Random-Intercept Cross-Lagged Panel Models, and SEM-forests were used to evaluate 129 time-invariant moderators spanning multiple levels of the bioecological model. Results: On average, all parenting practices negatively predicted internalizing problems, with substantial heterogeneity across families. The effect of maternal warmth was most heterogeneous, being protective in some families and harmful in others. The most influential moderators across all practices were family microsystem characteristics, in particular father involvement and parental life difficulties. Despite being an important moderator, father involvement’s marginal moderating effects were approximately flat, suggesting that it might interact with other family characteristics. Parental life difficulties diminished protective parenting effects. Conclusions: Macro-timescale parenting effects on adolescent internalizing problems are heterogeneous across families, and this heterogeneity depends primarily on the family microsystem rather than on individual adolescent characteristics. These findings suggest that one-size-fits-all approaches to parenting research and intervention are insufficient, and call for greater attention to the family context.</p>