Forgiveness Toward Parents and Internalizing Symptoms: Divergent Patterns Across Gender and Maltreatment Backgrounds / Perdón hacia los padres y síntomas internalizantes: patrones divergentes en función de sexo e historial de maltrato

Emerging adulthood is marked by heightened vulnerability to internalizing symptoms. However, whether forgiveness moderates the associations between parenting and internalizing symptoms remains unclear, particularly across parent–child gender dyads and perceived parental maltreatment histories. Data were drawn from a cohort of 834 emerging adults who completed an online survey assessing parenting, forgiveness toward parents, internalizing symptoms, and perceived parental maltreatment history. Participants also described hurtful experiences involving their mothers and fathers in separate open-ended questions. Approximately 70% of participants described at least one hurtful experience involving a parent, while 26.4% self-reported a perceived parental maltreatment history. Among those with perceived parental maltreatment histories, forgiveness moderated associations involving parental warmth in mother–daughter dyads and overparenting in father–son dyads. Among those without perceived parental maltreatment histories, significant moderation effects were found for overparenting in mother–daughter dyads and for both parental warmth and overparenting in father–daughter dyads. These findings highlight the diversity of hurtful experiences involving parents and suggest that the role of forgiveness varies across parent–child gender dyads and perceived parental maltreatment histories.