Concordance and discordance in parents’ and adolescents’ perceptions of parenting : a meta-analytic study

Researchers and clinicians often rely on multiple informants (e.g., parents and children) to report on child mental health problems and parenting behaviors; yet, different informants often provide inconsistent information (De Los Reyes et al., 2015; Korelitz & Garber, 2016). Such informant discordance creates challenges for clinicians in delivering services to patients and for researchers in drawing conclusions from study findings. Extant studies are inconsistent regarding the extent and sources of parent-adolescent discordance in perceptions of parenting and whether discordance relates to more positive or more negative adolescent outcomes. The current meta-analytic study aimed to shed light on these issues by examining potential moderators (e.g., adolescent, parent, and family characteristics) on (1) the relation between parent- and adolescent-reported parenting and (2) the relation between parent-adolescent parenting discordance and adolescent outcomes. By systematically synthesizing 313 studies involving both parent- and adolescent-reported parenting, the current study demonstrated that the correlation between parent- and adolescent-reported parenting was generally small, although it was significantly different from zero (r = .276, 95% CI [.262, .290]); on average, parents perceived parenting more positively than adolescents, with a mean-level difference that was small but significantly different from zero (g = .242, 95% CI [0.188, 0.296]). Meta-regression analyses demonstrated that there were higher levels of parent-adolescent discordance for younger (versus older) and male (versus female) adolescents, for non-clinical parents (versus parents with internalizing symptoms), in more individualistic societies such as the United States, and in ethnic minority (versus White), low (versus high) socioeconomic status, and non-intact (versus intact) families among U.S. samples. By meta-analyzing 24 studies that examined how parent-adolescent parenting discordance relates to adolescent outcomes, the current study found that parents’ more positive perceptions of parenting relative to adolescents negatively related to adolescent outcomes (r = -.083, 95% CI [-.129, -0.036]). This negative association was stronger among ethnic minority families than White families in the United States. Together, the current meta-analyses provide comprehensive information regarding (1) who are most likely to experience parent-adolescent discordance in reports of parenting and (2) whether and for whom parent-adolescent parenting discordance relates to more negative outcomes. These findings have important implications for research and clinical practice, including what future studies need to be done and what populations should be particularly targeted for intervention.