Combating Conflicting Messages of Values: A Closer Look at Parental Strategies Laura M. Padilla-Walker, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and Ross A. Thompson, University of California, Davis Abstract This study examined how parents respond when their children encounter values outside the home that conflict with family values. Forty-eight middle-class European American parents completed questionnaires consisting of 11 vignettes asking how they would respond to hypothetical situations where outside sources posed potential conflicts with parental values to their adolescent child (M age of child = 13.33 years). We identified five strategies that parents might use: controlled cocooning, reasoned cocooning, compromise, pre-arming, and deference. Parents in the study enlisted all five strategies, with reasoned cocooning and pre-arming occurring most frequently. The self-reported importance of values to parents was the most important predictor of which strategy parents used, with parents using more controlling strategies to defend values that were most important to them. Importance of values also mediated the relation between religion and the parent’s self-reported desire for the child’s compliance on personal issues, and parental strategy choice. This study is among the first to examine alternative parental strategies for regulating children’s values acquisition outside the home, and shows that the extent of parental control is related to the importance of specific values to the parent. Keywords: parenting; values; conflict In the past socialization has been described as a one-way process, with parents having a direct, unidirectional influence on their children. As socialization research has pro- gressed, not only has the child been perceived as having a more active role in the inter- action, but socialization influences have greatly expanded to include friends, teachers, media, and society. With parents no longer considered the sole important socializa- tion influence on children, questions are raised about how multiple socialization influ- ences interact with one another. For example, do these multiple influences provide children with similar or consistent messages concerning values, or do they send poten- tially conflicting messages (Bugental & Goodnow, 1998)? If potentially conflicting messages are encountered, what role do parents play in clarifying the differing mes- sages or ensuring the pre-eminence of their influences? Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Laura Padilla-Walker, Department of Psychology, 238 Burnett Hall, Lincoln, NE 68588. Email: lpwalker4@earthlink.net © Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005. Published by Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.