Distinguishing between Perceived Closeness and Parental Warmth in Families with Seventh-Grade Boys and Girls

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Abstract
The distinction between perceived closeness and parental warmth was explored by examining the relations between closeness and warmth and selected parent-reported and child-reported characteristics in 200 seventh-grade boys and girls and their parents. Results revealed that children perceived greater closeness with their mothers than with their fathers and that mothers perceived greater closeness with their children than did fathers. No differences were found in patterns of parental warmth. Conceived as a specific facet of warmth, closeness was found to be positively related to parent-reported measures of satisfaction with parenting and children's participation in family activities and to child-reported measures of self-esteem and expressiveness but not instrumentality. Parental warmth predicted little additional variance in satisfaction or participation, but it predicted a significant proportion of the variance in self-esteem and instrumentality above and beyond that predicted by closeness.

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