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| Home : Publications |
Parent-Child Relationships and Adjustment in Adolescence:
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Anna Beth Doyle, Ph.D. |
Marlene M. Moretti, Ph.D. |
Mara Brendgen, Ph.D. |
William Bukowski, Ph.D. |
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Appendix A - |
Overview and Description of Variables Used in HBSC and NLSCY Data Sets |
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Appendix C - |
Table of Regression Analyses Findings Based on HBSC Data Set |
Appendix D - |
Table of Regression Analyses Findings Based on NLSCY Data Set |
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Appendix G - |
Path Analyses: Overview and Significant Paths for NLSCY Maternal Depression |
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HBSC Substance Use/Externalizing Path Model: Paths Involving Age and Sex |
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HBSC School Identification Path Model: Paths Involving Age and Sex |
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HBSC Social Adjustment Path Model: Paths Involving Age and Sex |
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NLSCY Substance Abuse Path Model: Paths Involving Age and Sex |
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NLSCY School Adjustment Path Model: Paths Involving Age and Sex |
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NLSCY Social Adjustment Path Model: Paths Involving Age and Sex |
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The primary focus of this project was to examine developmental changes in parent-child relationships, and their associations with child adjustment between late childhood and mid-adolescence. These questions were addressed using data from two large, nationally representative samples of Canadian children and adolescents. Recommendations for healthy parenting practices and government initiatives are summarized.
Research has shown that secure attachment to parents facilitates children's adaptive adjustment. Securely attached children experience their parents as available and responsive to their needs. This security fosters adaptive exploration and buffers children from stress. In contrast, children who experience their parents as unavailable, unresponsive or rejecting become insecurely attached, and avoid relying on their parents for support. These avoidantly attached children derive little protection or guidance within their relationships with their parents. Children who experience their parents as inconsistent in their availability and responsiveness also become insecurely attached, specifically anxious or preoccupied. These anxiously attached or preoccupied children are never certain of attracting the support of their parents and tend to be dependent and clingy.
In a recent review of the published literature, Doyle and Moretti (2000) identified considerable evidence that secure attachment continues to contribute to adjustment in adolescence. For example, more positive attachment to parents among 15-year-olds has been found to be associated with fewer mental health problems such as anxiety, depression, inattention and conduct problems (Nada-Raja, McGee & Stanton, 1992). Though attachment was not specifically assessed, adolescents who report a positive relationship with their parents, and who feel comfortable turning to them for support, have been found to have a greater sense of mastery of their worlds (Paterson, Pryor & Field, 1995) and to experience less loneliness (Kerns & Stevens, 1996).
Just as parental sensitivity and responsiveness contribute to secure attachment in infancy, parental warmth/involvement, encouragement of increasing self-control and decision making, appropriate limit setting and monitoring appear to foster secure attachment and adjustment in late childhood and early adolescence (Baumrind, 1991; Steinberg, Dornbusch & Brown, 1992; Karavasilis, Doyle & Margolese, 1999). Low warmth and low control may be particularly associated with dismissing/avoidant attachment, and low psychological autonomy granting with preoccupied attachment. Similarly, hostile punishment and coercive interactions between parents and children combined with poor parental monitoring have been found to contribute to conduct problems in preadolescence and antisocial behaviour in adolescence (Dishion, Patterson, Stoolmiller & Skinner, 1991; Conger, Patterson & Ge, 1995). Very few of the reviewed studies, however, involved families in Canada and many were based on only small samples. Moreover, Doyle and Moretti (2000) identified several gaps in the literature and unanswered key research questions to be addressed in the present project.
The Health Behaviour in School-Aged Children: A World Health Organization Cross-National Survey sample included approximately 11,000 children aged 11-15 years in 1997-98. The National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth Cycle 2 sample included approximately 4,000 children aged 10-13 years in 1996-97, and their mothers.
Findings were highly consistent across the two data sets. These findings indicated that the period of adolescence presents major developmental challenges but also new opportunities for parent-child relationships and the way these relationships can influence adolescents' developmental adjustment.
Research Question 1:
In what way do parenting and parent-child relationships differ from late childhood (age 10-11 years) through mid-adolescence (15 years)?
Although mothers are less involved in children's school activity as they grow older, children feel their parents continue to provide school support in other ways. Parents of older children do not report different parenting practices than parents of younger children. Nonetheless, as they grow older, children feel the quality of their relationship with parents declines. Older children report that their parents understand them less and that they argue with parents significantly more. Older children feel their parents are less warm and more rejecting, and feel less at ease confiding in their mothers and their fathers than younger children.
Research Question 2:
How do child adjustment and social relationships change over this period?
Age changes in social relationships were consistent across the two samples. Smoking, alcohol use and affiliation with peers who use drugs increase with age whereas self-esteem decreases. Older children are less likely to use helmets and seatbelts than younger children. The quality of sibling relationships remains stable, but older children have more positive relationships with friends than younger children. Older children are less victimized by others and feel safer around school than younger children.
Research Question 3:
Do parenting practices, parent-child relationships and child adjustment differ for boys and girls during this period of development?
Parents report similar practices in parenting sons and daughters. Nonetheless, girls perceive their parents as less rejecting and warmer than boys. Boys and girls are equally at ease confiding in their mothers, but girls confide less in their fathers than boys.
Research Question 4:
Do effective parenting practices contribute to a positive parent-child relationship and, in turn, to healthy child development?
Harsher parenting (more yelling and use of physical punishment, less reasoning) leads children to feel their parents are more rejecting and cold toward them. How children perceive their relationship with their parents is related to child adjustment. Children who enjoy a more positive relationship with their parents are more likely to invest in school, to use seatbelts and helmets, and to experience fewer serious injuries. They have higher self-esteem, feel less depressed and are less anxious. Children who perceive their parents as more rejecting are more likely to smoke and use alcohol; they are more aggressive, bully others more, commit more property offences and affiliate more with deviant friends. They are also more likely to be victimized by others.
Research Question 7:
Do parenting practices influence child adjustment differently for girls versus boys or for younger versus older children?
Overall, girls are less aggressive, commit fewer property offences, bully others less and are less often victimized by others than boys. Moreover, although girls have lower self-esteem and more internalizing problems, they have better relationships with friends, are more prosocial and are more involved in school than boys. Nonetheless, the impact of parenting practices on girls and boys is similar. Parenting is also associated with adjustment in younger and older children in similar ways. That is, for both girls and boys of all ages, angry, arbitrary parenting (i.e. low use of reasoning) is associated with a poorer parent-child relationship (i.e. child perceptions of parents as less warm and more rejecting) which in turn is associated with poor child adjustment.
Research Question 8:
Do the influences of parenting and/or the quality of the parent-child relationship differ in social contexts traditionally thought to put children at risk for maladjustment?
Although few social contexts (i.e. maternal education, family income, maternal employment and single-parent family) directly affect child adjustment, some influence the quality of parent-child relationships. Children of mothers with less education and children in families with lower income tend to perceive their relationships with their parents more negatively. These negative perceptions in turn are associated with poorer adjustment. Maternal employment and single-parent status do not affect child adjustment independent of parenting and the parent-child relationship.
Research Question 9:
Is there evidence that relationships with mothers and fathers differ in their contribution to adjustment?
Daughters and sons feel equally at ease confiding in their mothers, but daughters confide less in their fathers than sons. Children who feel comfortable confiding in their fathers are better adjusted in a number of ways.
Recommendations for Parents
Parents need to recognize the continued importance of their relationship with their adolescents. Although the parent-child relationship undergoes transformation during adolescence, the adjustment of adolescents depends in good measure on the quality of their relationship with their parents.
Children are more vulnerable to adjustment problems in adolescence than in childhood. Parents need to anticipate that their adolescent requires increased support during periods of transition, such as entry into high school.
Adolescents need to feel that their parents are engaged and supportive of them. Adolescents are more independent than children in many aspects of their lives. Nonetheless, they require ongoing parental support in terms of parents remaining open to communication and responsive if help is needed, while, at the same time, fostering adolescent autonomy. Specific parenting skills include warmth, acceptance of individuality, active listening, behaviour monitoring, limit setting and negotiation.
Parents need to recognize the special role of fathers in supporting the well-being of their children. Fathers' increased psychological support of daughters may be particularly beneficial to them.
Obviously, adolescent adjustment is also determined by factors outside the family and the parent-child relationship. Even though parents may only indirectly affect how peers, romantic partners and other social influences determine the adjustment of their children, parents' support through the stressful challenges of adolescence remains important.
Recommendations for Intervention Programs
Assisting parents in the development of parenting skills that support their relationship with their adolescents can be beneficial in ensuring attachment security and healthy development during this period.
Public education programs should be launched to debunk the myth of adolescent detachment from parents and to enhance recognition and understanding of the importance of the parent-child relationship. Strategies to achieve this goal could include media advertising campaigns and provision of information brochures through government agencies, public health offices and schools. Appropriate speakers, as well as written and video materials, for junior high and high school parent groups, community centres, libraries, etc., would also be effective.
Efforts should be made by appropriate agencies in conjunction with researchers to develop and evaluate programs to assist parents in developing effective skills in parenting adolescents, including skills in providing support and guidance and in negotiating limits during transition periods. This could be expediently achieved through the development of universal school and community-based programs that target parents of children entering high school and that provide education and support regarding effective parenting skills during transitions in the parent-child relationship.
Efforts should be made to develop and evaluate targeted intervention programs that focus on attachment issues and effective parenting strategies for high-risk adolescents and their families. Income inadequacy and low maternal education put children at risk for non-optimal parenting and poorer parent-child relationships, which in turn are risk factors for child maladjustment. In themselves, however, neither maternal employment nor single-parent status are risk factors independent of parenting and the parent-child relationship.
Efforts should be made to develop and evaluate intervention programs that target attachment issues and effective parenting strategies specifically with adolescents and their families characterized by non-optimal parenting and poor parent-child relationships. A major finding of this study is the importance of these two factors in adolescent maladjustment.
Programs should focus on fathers' as well as mothers' relationships with their adolescent children. The importance of fathers' psychological support for their daughters' well-being should be highlighted.
Efforts should be made to advance educational training to increase the understanding and awareness of adolescent attachment issues by mental health and social service professionals, teachers, coaches, recreation and leisure leaders, front-line workers in youth-serving community organizations (e.g. Guides, Scouts, 4-H), etc.
A coordinated referral system must be available to those working with youth and families, so families and youth in need are referred to appropriate intervention programs.
Recommendations for Research
More research is needed to clarify the changing nature of girls' compared to boys' relationship to their fathers during adolescence, the relation of these differences to differential parental socialization and implications for adjustment.
The above associations between variables do not identify cause and effect. Research is necessary to clarify the causal role of parenting and the parent-child relationship in child adjustment. Longitudinal analyses following the development of the NLSCY children over time will contribute to answering this question. It is also possible that both parents' and children's behaviour may be a result of another factor, such as their genetic makeup. Again, further analyses of the NLSCY data set, taking into account the shared family background of children in the same family, will provide some assessment of such contributions.
Longitudinal analyses should continue to examine the role of social context risk factors such as inadequate income and low maternal education in the development of parenting problems and child maladjustment.
The above findings indicate the need for additional research, using more precise and extensive measures of parents' behaviour and of the parent-child relationship than in the HBSC and NLSCY studies. Specifically, more extensive and reliable direct measures of parenting, as well as more extensive age-appropriate measures of child-parent attachment are warranted.
Further research is required to determine whether parenting and the quality of parent-child relationships play a role in determining how other factors - such as peer influences - contribute to determining child adjustment.
Recommendations for Government Policy
Government agencies should support the above initiatives through mental health programs, the coordination of services and further research funding.
Baumrind, Diana. The influence of parenting style on adolescent competence and substance use, Journal of Early Adolescence, 11,1 (1991): 56-95.
Conger, Rand D., Gerald R. Patterson, & Xiaojia Ge. It takes two to replicate: A mediational model for the impact of parents' stress on adolescent adjustment, Child Development, 66,1 (1995): 80-97.
Dishion, T.J., G.R. Patterson, M. Stoolmiller, & M.L. Skinner. Family, school, and behavioural antecedents to early adolescent involvement with antisocial peers, Developmental Psychology, 27,1 (1991): 172-180.
Doyle, A.B. & M.M. Moretti. Attachment to Parents and Adjustment in Adolescence. Health Canada, File No. 032ss.H5219-00CYH3, 2000.
Karavasilis, K., A.B. Doyle, & S.K. Margolese. Links Between Parenting Styles and Adolescent Attachment. Poster presented at the biennial meetings of the Society for Research in Child Development, Albuquerque, March, 1999.
Kerns, Kathryn A. & Amy C. Stevens. Parent-child attachment in late adolescence: Links to social relations and personality, Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 25,3 (1996): 323-342.
Nada-Raja, Shyamala, Rob McGee, & Warren R. Stanton. Perceived attachments to parents and peers and psychological well-being in adolescence, Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 21,4 (1992): 471-485.
Paterson, Janis, Jan Pryor, & Jeff Field. Adolescent attachment to parents and friends in relation to aspects of self-esteem, Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 24,3 (1995): 365-376.
Steinberg, L., S.M. Dornbusch, & B.B. Brown. Ethnic differences in adolescent achievement: An ecological perspective. American Psychologist, 47,6 (1992): 723-729.
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Last Updated: 2004-01-08 |  |
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