Journal of Child and Family Studies https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-018-1270-6 ORIGINAL PAPER Domain-specific Parenting Practices and Adolescent Self-esteem, Problem Behaviors, and Competence Nadia Sorkhabi 1,2 ● Ellen Middaugh 3 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2018 Abstract In parent socialization research, it has been suggested that the specific practices parents apply to regulate different domains or areas of adolescents’ lives be examined to add greater specificity to domain-general studies of parenting styles or patterns and to better understand the link between parenting practices and adolescent adjustment. We examined from adolescents’ perspectives the parenting practices their mothers and fathers used when regulating different issues in different areas of adolescents’ lives. We examined 18 issues (e.g., grades, platonic friendship; smoking, fighting with siblings, choice of future career), classified into the moral, conventional, personal, and prudential domains, and multifaceted issues (issues that share features of more than one domain). We also examined whether domain variations in parenting practices are related to adolescents’ social and academic competence; self-esteem; internalizing, externalizing, attention, and total problems. Adolescents between 13 to 18 years of age (N = 182; M = 16.01 years of age; SD = 1.25) were interviewed (50 to 75 min) about the parenting practices their mothers and fathers employ for different issues. Adolescents also completed questionnaires on demographics and on their social and academic competence; self-esteem; internalizing, externalizing, attention, and total problems. Adolescent adjustment associated with some parenting practices (e.g., punishment) were domain-specific (e.g., positive in moral domain but negative in prudential domain). However, certain parenting practices (e.g., verbal hostility, coercion) were related to negative adjustment and others to positive adjustment (e.g., monitoring) irrespective of domains. The present study advances theoretical propositions regarding domain-specificity and domain generality of parenting practices. Keywords Parenting practices ● Social domains ● Adolescents ● Problem behaviors ● Self-esteem Parenting involves a variety of specific practices or actions in a variety of specific contexts. Socialization researchers have described the relations among various aspects of development and parent behaviors by examining parenting styles (e.g., authoritarian, authoritative, permissive, and unengaged; Baumrind 2012), which comprise a combina- tion of different parenting dimensions (e.g., responsiveness and demandingness; behavioral and psychological control; Barber 1996), and parenting dimensions in turn comprise a combination of different parenting practices (e.g., physical punishment; reasoning/explaining; shaming; inducing guilt). Recently, the necessity of examining specific par- enting practices exercised in specific contexts or domains of child activities, behaviors, or needs has been proposed (Bornstein et al. 2008; Grusec and Davidov 2010; Turiel 2010). These socialization researchers indicated that context-general and global characterizations of parenting do not allow for the possibility that practices may be beneficial in one context but harmful in another—a distinction that is useful for practice and parent education purposes. It is worth noting that parenting dimensions, styles, and prac- tices all provide useful but different information about parent behavior. Parenting dimensions and styles provide information about the overall pattern of parent behavior, with parenting dimensions involving a combination of practices, and parenting styles involving a combination of dimensions parents are likely to employ across domains * Nadia Sorkhabi nadia.sorkhabi@sjsu.edu 1 Child & Adolescent Development Department, San Jose State University, San Jose, CA 95192-0075, USA 2 Institute of Human Development, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA 3 Child and Adolescent Development Department San Jose State University, San Jose, CA, USA 1234567890();,: 1234567890();,: