Parental Attachment and Emotional Autonomy in Adolescents: A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

Adolescence requires individuals to develop emotional autonomy while maintaining meaningful relationships with their parents. However, parental attachment is frequently interpreted as dependence, creating conceptual uncertainty regarding whether emotional closeness facilitates or inhibits autonomy. This systematic literature review aimed to synthesize recent conceptual and empirical evidence concerning the relationship between parental attachment and emotional autonomy among adolescents. The review followed PRISMA 2020 and searched Scopus, Web of Science, PubMed, ScienceDirect, and Google Scholar for peer-reviewed studies published between 2016 and September 2026. Studies were eligible when they examined adolescent parental attachment and emotional autonomy or a theoretically equivalent construct. Of 158 identified records, 111 titles and abstracts were screened, 32 full-text reports were assessed, and eight studies involving 2,586 adolescents or parent–adolescent dyads were included in the narrative synthesis. The findings showed that secure, warm, and autonomy-supportive relationships were consistently associated with stronger volitional functioning, decision-making, emotion regulation, and subjective autonomy. Indonesian evidence demonstrated a moderate-to-strong positive association between attachment and independence (*r* = 0.506, *p* < 0.001), while intensive longitudinal evidence indicated beneficial effects of parental warmth and autonomy support in 91–98% of families. Conversely, attachment anxiety, avoidance, neglect, and psychological control were associated with reduced autonomy or defensive detachment. Cross-cultural evidence suggested that cultural context modified the mechanisms, but not the general direction, of these associations. The review concludes that secure parental attachment constitutes a relational foundation for emotionally regulated and responsible independence. Nevertheless, causal interpretation remains limited because six studies were cross-sectional and autonomy measures were heterogeneous.