Relationship between Maternal Parenting Styles and African American and White Adolescents' Interpersonal Relationships

Abstract

One hundred and fifty adolescents, ages 13 through 19 years, were administered the Parental Authority Questionnaire (PAQ) and the Assessment of Interpersonal Relations (AIR) in a counterbalanced order to examine the relationship between perceived maternal parenting styles and adolescents' interpersonal relations with their mothers, male peers, female peers and teachers. Parenting styles were categorized according to three parental prototypes identified by Baumrind (1971), permissive, authoritarian and authoritative. Students who described their mothers as authoritative reported better interpersonal relations than adolescents with authoritarian or permissive mothers. No significant gender differences were found on any of the measures; however, a significant race by relationship type interaction was found. African American students reported more positive relationships with their mothers than did White students; White students reported more positive relationships with their peers and with their teachers than did African American students.