Abstract
Recent studies indicate that high-SES adolescents--a population not traditionally considered "at-risk"--may be susceptible to maladaptive behaviors and anxious-depressive symptoms linked to adolescent reports of achievement pressure. Parental performance expectations could be a significant source of achievement pressure experienced by high SES adolescents. Data about parental performance expectations and personal values were collected by surveying parents and their ninth-grade children in a high SES community. Using Likert Scale surveys, parents self-rated their expectations and values, and students rated their perceptions of parents' expectations and values. Parent and student surveys also included open-ended questions for qualitative analyses. Significant differences were found between parents' and students' reports of parental academic and extracurricular expecations, with students rating parental expectations higher than their parents' self-reported expectations. Parents rated their support of intrinsic values/character goals for their adolescent children higher than adolescent children rated their parents' support of intrinsic values/character goals for them. Conversely, parents rated their support of extrinsic values/character goals for their adolescent children lower than adolescent children rated their parents' support of extrinsic values/character goals for them. The current study's general findings support the relatively new academic proposition that adolescents living in materially and educationally advantaged environments may be at-risk for maladaptive issues more commonly associated with adolescents at the opposite end of the SES spectrum. Future investigation of the effects of both deliberate and inadvertent messages conveyed by parents, and through other bioecological processes, could help alleviate performance pressure in high SES communities, and promote sensible, individualized achievement goals for adolescent children that support healthy growth and development.