The Longitudinal Relationship Between Parenting and Self-Control Needs Reconsideration: A Commentary on Li et al. (2019)

The relationship between parenting and self-control has received much attention from social and developmental psychologists. In a meta-analytic review, Li et al. (2019) identified a longitudinal association between parenting and subsequent self-control (P → SC) of r =.157, p <.001, and a longitudinal association between adolescent self-control and subsequent parenting (SC → P) of r =.155, p <.001. However, the longitudinal associations may have been substantially biased because Li et al. (2019) utilized the bivariate correlation between the predictor at Time 1 and the outcome at Time 2 to estimate the effect size. To provide a more accurate estimate of the longitudinal association between parenting and adolescent self-control, we reexamined the data on the basis of the cross-lagged association. The results showed weaker longitudinal associations for both P → SC (r =.059, p <.001) and SC → P (r =.062, p <.001). Our results point to the importance of utilizing the cross-lagged association in meta-analyzing the longitudinal relationship between variables.