This text focuses on parental psychological control, or intrusive, inhibiting and manipulative parental behaviours and interaction patterns that negatively affect healthy child development. Contributors review research and present methodologies and findings that should enhance the further study of this important component of the socialization of children. They also integrate the historical conceptualizations of parental psychological control, identify the aspects of child or adolescent development these conceptualizations appear to have targeted, and review and discuss the known child and adolescent correlates of parental psychological control. Chapters extend the work on psychological control of adolescents substantially by studying its relationship with other key variables in family and individual development. Some chapters examine the cross-cultural validity of the psychological control construct in young children from the USA, Russia and China as well as the effects of psychological control found in unique populations, such as children with disabilities like spina bifida.