Parents’ Psychopathology Promotes the Adoption of Ineffective Pornography-Related Parenting Mediation Strategies

Approximately half of all adolescents aged 9-16 are exposed to pornography. Research has indicated that parents often try to employ various mediating strategies (negative active, restriction and co-use) in order to regulate their children’s exposure to undesired content and that most of these strategies are ineffective or have the opposite effect. In the present study, we investigated whether parental psychopathology (depression, anxiety, stress) promotes the adoption of less optimal parenting styles and an ineffective mediating strategy to regulate their child pornography exposure. The sample comprised 1,070 Jewish Israeli parents to 10-14-year-old adolescents. Results indicated that for parents who characterized with mild anxiety and/or stress tend to adopte more authoritarian and less authoritative parenting style, which were linked with more ineffective mediating strategies with their child regarding pornography exposure – restrictive and negative active. These findings provide an opportunity for therapists as well as parents to gain a better insight into the link between psychopathology, parenting styles and the ability to regulate pornography exposure among children.

(Efrati & Boniel-Nissim, 2020) found that parents who endorsed mild or higher levels of anxiety and/or stress adopted more authoritarian parenting style, which characterizes parents who have high demandingness and low responsiveness and who are often rejecting, cold and claim strict adherence to rules and obedience to authority. Parents who endorsed mild or higher levels of anxiety were also less likely to adopt authoritative parenting style, which characterizes parents who combine high demandingness with responsiveness and uses reasoning, induction, and compromise and are often warm and constructive. In addition, we found that parents who are high on authoritarian parenting style tend to employ more restrictive mediation regarding their children’s pornography uses (setting rules about children’s behavior), which fits well with their overall tendency for draconian adherence to rules and obedience to authority. we found that parents who are low on authoritative parenting style (those who endorse mild or higher anxiety) tend to turn away from restrictive and/or negative active mediating strategies, and thus to avoid maladaptive strategies when trying to regulate their children’s pornography use