Perceived Parental Rearing Practices, Supportive School Environment, and Self-Reported Emotional and Behavioral Problems among Lithuanian Secondary School Students

Previous research rarely addressed parental rearing practices, perceived safety at school, teachers’ support andschool climate in the same study. Most often those two contexts-home environment and school context-areanalyzed separately. Several authors have advocated the need for incorporating those two contexts in the study ofemotional and behavioral problems (Suldo et al., 2012). Thus, the main purpose of the study was to investigatethe relationship between the perceived parental practices (parents’ reactions to adolescents’ behavior, i.e., guiltinduction and emotional warmth) and supportive school environment (school attachment, school climate,perceived teacher support, and feelings of safety at school) with adolescents’ emotional and behavioral problems.The data used is from an ongoing longitudinal Positive Youth Development study (POSIDEV) that examines themechanisms and processes through which young people develop their competences. The sample comprised 2625Lithuanian students (1146 boys and 1479 girls, age 14-20 (M = 16.69; SD = 1.17)) from the ninth, tenth,eleventh and twelfth grades of 8 upper secondary schools. The results showed that parents’ emotional warmthwas negatively, and psychological control was positively related to students’ depressive symptoms anddelinquent behavior. Furthermore, perceived teacher support, feelings of safety at school were negativelyassociated with adolescents’ depressive symptoms and delinquent behavior, when students’ perceptions ofnegative school climate were positively associated with adolescents’ depressive symptoms and delinquentbehavior. After entering school context variables in the regression, demographic characteristics and mother’sguilt induction practice remained significant, but mother’s emotional warmth was no longer significant. Thissuggests the possibility that school context acts as a mediator between emotional warmth by mother anddelinquent behavior. This finding has important practical implications in terms of shedding some insight on howmultiple systems might be interlinked in influencing wellbeing in adolescents and confirms the importance ofintervening at the double platform of both the family and the school system.