Parents Value Demonstration as a Determinant of Youth Experiences and Responses to Parents’ Warnings Following the Onset of Risk Behavior

When parents first learn about their adolescent’s problem behaviors, they may warn their teen that further involvement in problem behaviors will lead to increased restraints, surveillance, or resource withdrawal. However, research has not investigated how adolescents experience and respond to such warnings. Drawing on research on the benefits of parents’ demonstration of the merit of their values in their behavior (inherent value demonstration), this study examined the potential role of inherent value demonstration as a moderator of youth responses to warnings. Participants were 105 Israeli adolescents (Mage = 14.87 years, SD = 1.52, 57.1% female) who completed an individualized survey asking them to indicate which of 29 problem behaviors they had engaged in during the last month. The survey then selected the most serious problem behavior youth engaged in, and asked them to rate two parental reactions - warnings and perspective-taking - to the onset of this behavior, their experiences and responses following parents’ reactions, problem behavior recurrence, and parents’ general inclination to demonstrate their values in their behavior. As hypothesized, and with youth problem behavior characteristics and parents’ perspective-taking controlled, youth were more likely to experience their parents’ warnings as need-frustrating and respond defiantly when they perceived their parents as failing to demonstrate their values in their behavior. Additionally, inherent value demonstration was positively associated with perception of parents’ reactions as need supporting and negatively related to perception of parents reactions as need thwarting and defiance. These findings suggest that parents’ inherent value demonstration may function as a protective factor that enables youth to experience their parents’ warnings less negatively.