Supportive parenting and adolescent adjustment across time in former East and West Germany LINDA P. JUANG AND RAINER K. SILBEREISEN Using a 3-year longitudinal data set, we examined the effects of consistently versus inconsistently supportive parenting on several aspects of adolescent adjustment. Supportive parenting was a multidimensional construct which included parental sensitivity, predictability and involvement. The sample consisted of 283 German early adolescents (mean age = 11?4 years, S.D. =1?2 at time 1) from former East (n = 97) and West (n = 186) Germany. As hypothesized, adolescents who reported their parents to be consistently supportive (e.g. supportive for at least two points in time) had lower levels of depression and delinquency, higher levels of self-efficacy and did better in school over the 3-year period than adolescents who reported their parents to be inconsistently supportive (e.g. supportive at only one time point or less). The results showed that there were no significant interactions between region and supportive parenting, indicating that the effects of consistently supportive parenting ``worked'' in a similar manner in both contexts of former East and West Germany. Results also reveal that supportive parenting is not necessarily a stable phenomenon, but may fluctuate from year to year. # 1999 The Association for Professionals in Services for Adolescents Introduction The stylistic component of parenting (i.e. attitudes communicated through behaviours that create the emotional climate for parenting) and also the more specific practices of parenting that encourage positive social development in children and adolescents, have been widely studied during the last few decades (Darling and Steinberg, 1993). Authoritative parenting (demonstrating warmth, firmness and promoting autonomy) (Baumrind, 1989, 1991), especially, has received much of this attention, because it has been consistently linked to positive adjustment in children and adolescents. For instance, studies have found that children and adolescents from authoritative homes score higher in academic achievement measures, show healthier psychosocial adjustment and engage in lower levels of delinquency (Dornbusch et al., 1987; Lamborn et al., 1991; Steinberg et al., 1991). In addition to the specific dimensions that constitute authoritative parenting, other types of positive or supportive parenting have also been investigated. For example, parental sensitivity, predictability and involvement have been targets of research. Each of these three aspects of parenting has been found to play an important role in the socialization outcomes of children and adolescents. Parental sensitivity has been associated with similar constructs such as warmth, acceptance and responsiveness (Schaefer, 1959; Maccoby and Martin, 1983; Rothbaum and Weisz, 1994). These terms imply a positive interactional relationship style between the Parts of this article were presented at the European Association for Research on Adolescence Conference in Budapest, Hungary, June, 1998. Reprint requests and correspondence should be addressed to L. P. Juang, Friedrich-Schiller University of Jena, Department of Developmental Psychology, Am Steiger 3/1, 07743 Jena, Germany (E-mail: S7juli@rz.uni-jena.de). 0140-1971/99/060719+18 $3000/0 # 1999 The Association for Professionals in Services for Adolescents Journal of Adolescence 1999, 22, 719±736 Article No. jado.1999.0267, available online at http://www.idealibrary.com on