Parenting Styles and Youth’s Externalizing and Internalizing Behaviors: Does Self-Control Matter?

Abstract The externalizing and internalizing behaviors of children and youth have been the object of extensive criminological research, mainly due to the potentially harmful impact on these individuals' future development and adjustment. The current study aimed to explore the influence of parenting styles on the emergence of children and youth’s externalizing and internalizing behaviors and to understand the influence of self-control in this relationship. Following a quantitative self-report approach and using a sample of 472 Portuguese middle-school children, this study found that the children’s sex, low self-control, and authoritative parenting style significantly predicted externalizing and internalizing behaviors. The data also revealed that children's age and the permissive parenting style significantly predicted externalizing but not internalizing behaviors and that the authoritarian parenting style significantly predicted internalizing behaviors. Low self-control partially mediated the relationship between parenting styles and externalizing and internalizing behaviors in most tested models. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.