Over the past few years, studies about positive parenting have focused on three dimensions: acceptance versus rejection, provision of structure versus permissiveness and autonomy support versus parental control.  At present, there is a consensus on the existence of these three dimensions. In addition, research about parenting has developed a strong interest on parental psychological control specifically. Nevertheless, there has been great confusion in the theoretical corpus because the term "control" has been used in different, contradictory ways (Skinner, Johnson, & Snyder, 2005), and this disparity in the use and definition of the concept has influenced the results of research.

To overcome these contradictions, Grolnick & Pomerantz (2009) proposed a new definition of "parental control” coming from self-determination theory. From this point of view, parental control refers to attempts “at forcing children to meet demands, solving problems for children, and taking a parental rather than child’s perspective” (Grolnick & Pomerantz, 2009, p.167). Thus, controlling parents undermine the development of autonomy because they use controlling tactics to get their children to behave the way they want. This control can be exercised through behavior patterns: Provide punishment behavior threats; Inducing feelings of guilt; Promote behaviors based on goals.

Autonomy support is the opposite pole to control. Autonomy supportive parents show consideration for the children’s perspective, allow them to solve problems on their own and encourage them to be autonomous (Raftery-Helmer & Grolnick, 2016; Grolnick, Price, Beiswenger, & Sauck, 2007; Roth, Assor, Niemiec, Ryan, & Deci, 2009). In recent research autonomy support has been operationalized in some strategies. First, empathy, or recognition and understanding the child’s perspective. Second, providing a rationale for rules and demands. Third, offering choices whenever possible, and fourth, opening exchanges avoiding controlling language (Brenning, Soenens, Van Petegem, & Vansteenkiste, 2015; Grolnick et al., 2014; Joussemet, Landry, & Koestner, 2008).

In this sense, with respect to the dimension supporting autonomy versus parental control, it has been shown that the more parental control and less support for autonomy, children can develop depression, low academic performance, low self-esteem or anxiety. With regard to the social domain, parental autonomy support was negatively related to externalizing problem behavior and positively related to social competence (Skinner et al., 2005), but was positively correlated with self-worth (Sher-Censor. Parke, & Coltrane, 2011; Skinner et al., 2005), feelings of choice (Roth et al., 2009), internalization of rules (Laurin & Joussemet, 2017), and general well-being (Van der Kaap-Deeder, Vansteenkiste, Soenens, & Mabbe, 2017).

On the other hand, the importance of self-concept in the development of adolescents has been demonstrated: Higher self-concept scores corresponded to better psychological adjustment, good personal skills and fewer behavioral problems (Fuentes, García, Gracia, & Lila, 2011).

Therefore, both the perception of parental autonomy support and the perception of parental control influence the social adjustment of children on different variables: self-concept, self-worth and academic performance (García y Musitu, 1999; Grolnick & Pomerantz, 2009).

It should indicate that with respect to the parental structure, and under the framework of the theory of self-determination, very few investigations have been made that analyze their influence on self-concept on young people. In this way, we want analyze in this work the differences, both between subjects (intersubject variability by gender) and within subjects (intrasubject variability) on the levels of perception of parental autonomy support (AA) and parental control (PC) in a sample of Spanish late adolescents. Further, we analyze the relations between Perceived Parental Autonomy Support/Perceived Parental Control and Self-concept.

Participants Students participating in this study (n= 368) were from four degrees (Pedagogy, Primary Teacher, Engineering and Computers), 230 of whom were women (62.7%) and 137 men (37.3%). The age range was 19 to 33 years (M= 19.80, SD = 2.11). Procedure Data were collected during lectures by members of research team. All participated voluntarily in the data collection, and there was no remuneration or course credits for participation. The questionnaire took about 20 min to complete. Anonymity of their answers was guaranteed. Measures Perceived Parental Autonomy Support Scale (P-PASS) (Mageau et al., 2015). This instrument consists in 24 items assessing autonomy support (provision of choice with certain limits; rationale for demands and limits; and acknowledgement of feelings) versus controlling parenting (threats to punish, performance pressures, and guilt-inducing criticisms). Adolescent participants rated each item on 7-likert scale, mother and father (1 = Do not agree at all to 7 = Very strongly agree). Reliability original version was .89, for mothers and fathers. AF5. Autoconcepto Forma 5 (García & Musitu, 1999). This self-report is a Spanish instrument which assess the self-concept person in five aspects: social, academic/labour live, emotional, family, and physical. Contestants replied the 30 items, with values between 1 and 99, depending on agree level with the statement. The reliability of whole scale is .82; by each self-concept are academic/professional life, α = .88; social, α = .70; emotional, α = .73; family, α = .77 and physical, α = .74. Data Analysis Descriptive analyses of the sample are carried out. Subsequently, we performed the ANOVA statistical test, taking into account the variable gender as the main variable and the perceived parental autonomy support and perceived parental control as criterion variables. Findings predict the population data taking into account the interaction between the two variables (perceived parental autonomy support versus perceived parental control) and gender at the intra-subject level. Also, we performed a linear regression to determine the weight of the parental autonomy support / parental control perceived by the students on the five evaluated dimensions self-concept.

The main results show that the final adolescents of Spain, both men and women, perceive greater parental autonomy support than parental control. In addition, the maternal perceived autonomy support is greater than the perceived autonomy support of fathers. Also, boys perceive greater control of both their mothers (F = 11.09; p <. 01, eta squared = .04) and their fathers (F = 13.535; p < .001, eta squared = .05). On the other hand, there is no interaction between parental control and gender. However, intra-person differences are predicted on how they perceive the parental control exercised by each of the progenitors, being greater for the mother. As for the second objective of our study, we get the following results: • Maternal autonomy support has a positive influence on the development of the academic / work (β=.30/r2=.09), physical (β=.14/r2=.02) and family (β=.49/r2=.46) self-concepts. • The autonomy support exercised by the father has a positive influence on the development of a social self-concept (β=.35/r2=.12). • Maternal control has a negative influence on the emotional self-concept (β= -.14/r2=.02) and positively influences the family self-concept (β=.15/r2=.46). • The parental control exercised by the father has a negative influence on the family self-concept (β= -.46/r2=.46). Thus, these work about makes it possible to advance scientific knowledge on positive parenthood. It has a direct benefit for the professionals involved in family education guidance, and very especially for families, because it supposes an adjustment of models based on the theory of self-determination, which will facilitate the improvement of existing family education programs. This benefit will be complemented and optimized with contributions related to the "family biography" that will give precise guidance on how to intervene with families, opening a way to overcome gender differences in family dynamics.

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