Adolescent sense of personal agency: Exploring gendered perspectives on parental and peers attachments

Sense of personal agency (SPA) is crucial for adolescents’ psychosocial adjustment and well-being. The relationships with parents and peers, as well as the adolescent’s sex, have been suggested as important correlates of adolescents’ SPA. Nevertheless, no prior study has adopted a gender perspective to analyze how the intertwining of relationships between parents and peers relates to adolescent’s sense of agency. The current study investigates whether attachment to peers mediates the links between attachment to parents and SPA and whether these links are equal for boys and girls. The sample includes 1119 Portuguese adolescents (56.2% girls; 43.8% boys) aged 14 to 19. Structural equation modeling results suggest that attachment to peers is more strongly associated with boys’ SPA than girls. Results also indicate that regardless of adolescent sex, the quality of the emotional bond with the mother, but not the father, is positively associated with adolescents’ SPA. Furthermore, the results suggest that attachment to peers mediates the links between attachment to parents and adolescents’ SPA. Quality relationships with the adolescent’s different-sex parental figures (mother-son, father-daughter) are associated with higher-quality peer relationships, which are associated with a stronger SPA. On the contrary, inhibition relationships with the adolescent’s same-sex parental figure (mother-daughter, father-son) are associated with lower quality in adolescent’s peer relationships, which is associated with a lower SPA. These findings underline the importance of considering a gender perspective to understand better the role of family and peer contexts in the adolescent SPA.