Coordination of Maternal Autonomic Reactivity Predicts Psychological Control

Empirical inquiry has demonstrated the benefits of autonomy-supportive parenting practices and harms of parental psychological control for youth development and wellbeing, though specific sources of variation in use of these practices remains unclear. Individual differences in parenting practices may be related to physiological stress reactivity; more importantly, the coordination of stress responses across multiple physiological systems within the autonomic nervous system (ANS) may account for differences in parenting practices. Guided by the autonomic space model of ANS functioning, this study investigates the role of mothers’ physiological stress response in relation to autonomy-supportive and controlling parenting practices. Sixty-eight mothers ( M age = 40.88, SD = 6.97) of young adolescents watched their children participate in a stressful laboratory-based public speaking task. Changes from baseline in mothers’ skin conductance level (SCL reactivity) and respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA reactivity) were calculated. Youth reported perceptions of mothers’ promotion of volitional functioning, promotion of independence, and psychological control. Physiological measures interacted such that mothers who experienced higher SCL reactivity engaged in more youth-reported psychological control when RSA scores showed little to no change from baseline to stressful task, but less psychological control when RSA scores decreased from baseline to challenge. Thus, this asynchronous pattern of ANS activity was associated with a parenting practice that typically inhibits developmentally appropriate autonomy among young adolescents, suggesting that mothers’ parenting behaviors are associated with the coordinated physiological stress response of the two ANS systems.