The impact of environmental threats on controlling parenting and children's motivation

Past studies looking at antecedents of controlling parenting revealed an association between parents' use of these detrimental practices and their perceptions of the environment as threatening for their children. However, the causal impact of environmental threats on controlling practices remained to be assessed. This study filled this gap using an experimental design and a sample of 101 children (Mage = 10.21 years) and their mothers. We manipulated mothers' perceptions of environmental threats, subsequently asked them to help their children complete a task in a guided learning setting, and obtained multi-informant observational measures of maternal controlling practices during this interaction. Results first showed that mothers with a high (but not low) controlling style were coded by an independent observer as significantly more controlling in the threat condition than in the control condition. Results also revealed that mothers in the threat condition were perceived by their children as significantly more controlling than mothers in the control condition, regardless of their controlling style. Path analyses then showed that coded maternal practices predicted children's perceptions of maternal controlling practices, which in turn were associated with higher levels of controlled motivation in children. Examining indirect effects also revealed a significant link from environmental threats to children's controlled motivation, via perceived maternal controlling practices. Contributions of these results to the literature on parenting are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).