Dr. Mia Smith Bynum, along with two other colleagues, recent graduate Dr. John Hart (PhD '17) and 2018 Presidential Postdoc Dr. Erica Coates published a paper in the journal Parenting: Science and Practice entitled Parenting Style and Parent-Adolescent Relationship Quality in African American Mother-Adolescent Dyads. The work examined the relations between parenting styles and perceived mother-adolescent relationship quality in a socioeconomically diverse sample of African American mothers and adolescents. For this study, 109 African American female caregivers completed measures of maternal warmth, maternal monitoring, and information on family demographics. Adolescents completed measures assessing their perceptions of specific aspects of mother-adolescent relationship quality and demographic information. They found that authoritative mothers reported greater monitoring than mothers classified as having authoritarian, indulgent, and neglectful styles. Authoritative mothers also reported higher levels of warmth than mothers classified as authoritarian or neglectful styles. Authoritarian mothers reported significantly higher levels of monitoring when compared to indulgent mothers and neglectful mothers. Consistent with predictions, adolescents with authoritative mothers reported more positive mother-adolescent relationship quality in the form of greater communication, trust, and alienation when compared to adolescents with authoritarian and neglectful mothers. Against predictions, neither household income nor adolescent gender moderated the associations between parenting style and mother-adolescent relationship quality.
Dr. Mia Smith-Bynum is a clinical psychologist by training and is an expert in African American mental health, family interaction and communication in ethnic minority families, parenting, and racial identity. She also has expertise in adolescent mental health, adolescent sexual behavior, and parent-adolescent communication about difficult topics.
Dr. John Hart is a Family Science Alum with a Licensed Clinical Marriage and Family therapist (LCMFT), a Pre-Clinical Member of American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy (AAMFT), and an AAMFT Approved Supervisor Candidate. He is a therapist and the public relations manager at the Relationship Counseling Center of Maryland (RCC). At RCC, he assists couples in their journey towards communicating healthier, meeting each other's needs efficiently and consistently, and growing together. He is also a supervisor and mentor for graduate students and beginning therapists at the Center for Healthy Families.
Dr. Erica Coates is a clinical psychologist who received her PhD at the University of South Florida. She recently joined the department of Psychiatry, Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Program at Georgetown University School of Medicine as an associate professor after working with Both Dr. Mia Smith-Bynum and Dr. Kevin Roy with the family science department on their research on fatherhood and black families.