ABSTRACT
This study aimed at understanding parenting changes over time from childhood to adolescence in Jordan. More specifically, the focus was on four major domains of parenting, including parental warmth, behavioral control, rules/limit-setting, and knowledge solicitation. Furthermore, the study examined whether changes over time in parenting are a function of parents’ age at the time of the child’s birth, parents’ education, or child gender. Across child ages 8–17, 114 children, their mothers, and their fathers completed the Parental Acceptance-Rejection/Control Questionnaire-Short Form and Parental Monitoring Scale. Multilevel modeling via the PROC MIXED procedure in SAS 9.4 was used to examine study hypotheses. The findings revealed that Jordanian parenting domains were characterized by similar trajectories over middle childhood and adolescence. All four parenting domains we examined (warmth, behavioral control, rules/limit-setting, and knowledge solicitation) decreased in frequency across adolescence. These changes over time were all linear, and therefore relatively constant. Child gender predicted all four parenting trajectories. Maternal age at the time of the child’s birth and parents’ education also predicted some trajectories.
