Mastery in middle adolescence: the contributions of socioeconomic status, maternal mastery and supportive-involved mothering.

Mastery, or the feeling of power or control over one's life, is a vital yet understudied covariate of wellbeing in adolescence and adulthood. The goal of the current study was to explore the effects of demographic characteristics (i.e., sex, age, race/ethnicity, and socioeconomic status (SES)), maternal mastery, and supportive-involved mothering on children's mastery at ages 16-17 years. 855 teens (47.6% female) and their mothers provided study data as part of the 1992 and 1998 waves of National Longitudinal Survey of Youth-1979 (NLSY-79; 24.1% Hispanic, 36.6% Black). Hybrid path models indicated that only maternal parenting during middle childhood was linked directly to levels of children's mastery in middle adolescence; a small portion of the association between parenting and adolescent mastery was attributable to SES. The discussion centers on significance of these findings for future research and theory development.