When Parents Seek Perfection: Implications for Psychological Functioning Among Teens at High-Achieving Schools
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ORIGINAL PAPER
When Parents Seek Perfection: Implications for Psychological Functioning Among Teens at High-Achieving Schools Kelsey Stiles
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Steve S. Lee1 Suniya S. Luthar2 ●
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Accepted: 3 September 2020 / Published online: 18 September 2020 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Although often considered to be at low risk for negative outcomes, there is replicated evidence that youth attending highachieving schools experience clinically significant mental health problems that exceed national norms. However, relatively little is known about family correlates of adolescent socio-emotional development, including parental criticism and expectations. Using a sample of high school students (N = 710, mean age = 16.7 years, 45% female) drawn from a highachieving school in a largely affluent area, this study investigated concurrent associations between adolescent perceptions of maternal and paternal criticism and expectations with their self-reported internalizing and externalizing psychopathology. To discern configurations of family environment based on separate ratings of maternal and paternal criticism and expectations, we employed person-centered, latent profile analysis. An empirically distinct class emerged consisting of families with elevated maternal and paternal criticism and expectations; this class concurrently reported the highest levels of internalizing and externalizing problems. These findings highlight the importance of parent-child relationships for offspring well-being and suggest that paternal achievement expectations may be particularly relevant among high-achieving youth. We consider these findings within the larger context of family factors and adolescent development among youth in highachieving contexts, including the significant need to consider father-offspring relationship factors. Keywords Parent-child relationships High-achieving youth Affluence Developmental psychopathology Adolescence ●
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Highlights Youth from high-achieving schools are at elevated risk for mental health problems. ● Parent criticism and expectations were correlated with youth psychopathology. ● Father-child relationships were especially salient for youth with the highest risk. ● Parent influences are crucial for assessing risk among achievement-oriented youth. ●
Despite assumptions that family affluence constitutes a lowrisk environment with respect to offspring development, there is replicated evidence that adolescent psychopathology exceeds national norms in high-achieving schools (HASs), where most students are from relatively wealthy families (for reviews, see Ebbert et al. 2019; Luthar et al.
* Kelsey Stiles [email protected] 1
Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA
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Department of Psychology, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA
2019; Leonard et al. 2015). Elevations have been reported as early as middle school with prospective effects extending through high school (Ciciolla et al. 2017; E
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