The role of separation-individuation experiences and personality in predicting externalizing and internalizing dimensions of functional impairment in a rural preadolescent and adolescent sample.

Studied 4th- through 8th-grade students in a rural school district (N = 382, 201 girls; M age = 12.48) who, at the end of the academic year, completed self-report measures assessing functional impairment, self-concept, reactance, and autonomy experiences in relation to parents. Confirmatory factor analysis supported a distinction between 2 aspects of autonomy: mutuality (perceptions of parents as encouraging of autonomy) and conflictual dependence (negative representations of "self-in-relation-to-parent" and related feelings of anger and shame).