Abstract

Previous research rarely addressed parental rearing practices, perceived safety at school, teachers’ support and
school climate in the same study. Most often those two contexts-home environment and school context-are
analyzed separately. Several authors have advocated the need for incorporating those two contexts in the study of
emotional and behavioral problems (Suldo et al., 2012). Thus, the main purpose of the study was to investigate
the relationship between the perceived parental practices (parents’ reactions to adolescents’ behavior, i.e., guilt
induction and emotional warmth) and supportive school environment (school attachment, school climate,
perceived teacher support, and feelings of safety at school) with adolescents’ emotional and behavioral problems.
The data used is from an ongoing longitudinal Positive Youth Development study (POSIDEV) that examines the
mechanisms and processes through which young people develop their competences. The sample comprised 2625
Lithuanian students (1146 boys and 1479 girls, age 14-20 (M = 16.69; SD = 1.17)) from the ninth, tenth,
eleventh and twelfth grades of 8 upper secondary schools. The results showed that parents’ emotional warmth
was negatively, and psychological control was positively related to students’ depressive symptoms and
delinquent behavior. Furthermore, perceived teacher support, feelings of safety at school were negatively
associated with adolescents’ depressive symptoms and delinquent behavior, when students’ perceptions of
negative school climate were positively associated with adolescents’ depressive symptoms and delinquent
behavior. After entering school context variables in the regression, demographic characteristics and mother’s
guilt induction practice remained significant, but mother’s emotional warmth was no longer significant. This
suggests the possibility that school context acts as a mediator between emotional warmth by mother and
delinquent behavior. This finding has important practical implications in terms of shedding some insight on how
multiple systems might be interlinked in influencing wellbeing in adolescents and confirms the importance of
intervening at the double platform of both the family and the school system.

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