Associations Between Parenting Behaviors and Adolescent Romantic Relationships

We examined associations between parenting behaviors and romantic relationship qualities in 102 adolescent girls 14-21 years of age who lived with their parent/parental figure and had current boyfriends. Adolescent girls' perceptions that parents were accepting/involved and provided appropriate strictness and supervision were significantly related to adolescent girls' perceptions of mutuality (i.e., bidirectional movement of thoughts, feelings, and activities between persons) within their own romantic relationships, which in turn was related to their romantic relationship satisfaction. No parenting variables were related to nonexclusivity.