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Parenting, autonomy and self‐care of adolescents with Type 1 diabetes
Author(s) -
Dashiff C.,
Vance D.,
Abdullatif H.,
Wallander J.
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
child: care, health and development
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.832
H-Index - 82
eISSN - 1365-2214
pISSN - 0305-1862
DOI - 10.1111/j.1365-2214.2008.00892.x
Subject(s) - autonomy , psychology , developmental psychology , anxiety , cognition , clinical psychology , type 2 diabetes , diabetes mellitus , medicine , psychiatry , political science , law , endocrinology
Background During adolescence diabetes creates a juncture of very complex disease management demands with developmental needs, including the striving of adolescents for greater autonomy. Parents' concerns and fears about the teen's diabetes self‐management abilities during this time can heighten parental attachment behaviour and affect the parents' ability to support autonomy development necessary for effective self‐care. Maternal parenting processes may be especially important for those adolescents who have Type 1 diabetes because mothers are the primary caregivers. Purpose Based on attachment theory, the aim was to test a model of the influence of mother–adolescent developmental conflict, maternal separation anxiety and maternal inhibition of autonomy and relatedness on cognitive autonomy and self‐care of adolescents with Type 1 diabetes. Method A total of 131 families with an adolescent, aged 11–15 years, contributed data annually across three waves. Mothers and adolescents completed paper‐and‐pencil measures and two interaction scenarios that were coded by trained staff from audio‐tapes. The adolescent also completed a structured interview and questionnaire to assess self‐care. Results Maternal separation anxiety when adolescents were 11–15 years of age directly predicted cognitive autonomy at 1‐year follow‐up, and that cognitive autonomy was directly related to self‐care 1 year later, but did not mediate between separation anxiety and self‐care. Conclusions Future investigation of the influence of separation anxiety of parents on adolescent autonomy development is warranted, as well as the contribution of autonomy development to diabetes self‐management behaviours of adolescents.