both parents discipline together, the adolescent shows better adjustment than when only one parent disciplines. When both mothers and stepfathers show high acceptance, adolescents in stepfamilies report less anxiety, depression and risky behaviors. It is likely that high consistency in parenting and coparenting provides a foundation of support that promotes adolescent development (Weissman & Cohen, 1985) by making adolescents feel more secure in their relationships with their parents. In all but one model (father-adolescent involvement and adolescent self-reports of depression), results failed to find that one parent makes up for deficiencies of the other. Thus it is not that one parent compensates for the other, but rather that having two parents who employ the same parenting practices seems to be particularly beneficial for adolescents. The finding supports Doherty et al.’s (1998) model in recognizing the moderating role of mothers’ parenting on fathers’ parenting. While particular types of moderation would sometimes cluster by family type (e.g., 70 percent of the moderation by mother discipline occurred in stepfamilies) moderation by mothering overall was not limited to a single family type or ethnicity, suggesting modest generalizability of this effect. However, the data tentatively suggest that parental agreement/disagreement may be more critical in stepfamilies
