Reciprocity,agreement, and family style in family systems with a disturbed and nondisturbed adolescent

Doane's recent review of interaction studies of families with disturbed and nondisturbed adolescents enumerated a number of conclusions concerning relationships and family functioning in families with a disturbed adolescent. The present study used a questionnaire approach to test hypotheses based on these conclusions, hypotheses which were largely supported in the analyses. When a disturbed adolescent was involved, families evidenced less reciprocity of needs, had greater disagreement about parents' needs, greater disagreement about family-related issues, more marital dysfunction, more rigidity and less clarity about expectations, and less satisfaction and more anxiety on the part of the adolescents. That families with a disturbed adolescent were discriminably different from families without a disturbed adolescent is supportive of a family systems perspective to family functioning. Speculations of a causal nature are offered, with suggestions that future research be designed to take advantage of causal analysis procedures.NIMH Predoctoral Research Fellowship 7F01 MH 3253502 provided partial support for this research.Received her Ph.D. in social personality psychology from the University of Colorado. Current research interests include the transition to adulthood, friendship and sex-role development in adolescence.     

Gender issues in the interface of family experience and adolescents' friendship and dating identity

This study focuses on the role of family experience in adolescents' conception of the self in the context of friendship and dating relationships. Three issues are addressed: the extent of sex differences in adolescents' friendship and dating identity, how links between family experience and friendship and dating identity might differ for males and females, and whether mothers and fathers play distinctive roles in such development. A sample of Caucasian two-parent families, each including an adolescent who was a high school senior, was observed in a family interaction task designed to elicit the expression and coordination of a variety of points of view. Each adolescent was also given an interview assessing exploration and commitment in friendship and dating identity. Only one sex difference was found in identity, with females more committed in their conceptions of dating relationships than males. The key finding of the study concerns the distinctive patterns of family interaction associated with friendship and dating identity. For females, separateness in family interaction was related to their friendship identity exploration, whereas for males, the links between family interaction and exploration all involved connectedness. The different contingencies may reflect the interplay between different societal patterns of support and restriction of males' and females' exploration.This work was supported by grants from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (HD-92819 and HD-17983) and the Hogg Foundation for Mental Health and from the University Research Institute and the Institute of Human Development and Family Studies of the University of Texas at Austin.Received her Ph.D. in child psychology from the University of Minnesota. Research interests include the role of family and peer relationships in the development of individual and relational competence, and the interface of family, peer, and school contexts in the development of children and adolescents.Received his Ph.D. in child psychology from the University of Minnesota. Research interests include the role of the family in adolescent personality development and identity formation, career development, and adoptive family relationships.     

The Role of Language, Parents, and Peers in Ethnic Identity Among Adolescents in Immigrant Families

To construct a model of the influences on ethnic identity among adolescents in immigrant families, we surveyed adolescents and their parents from 81 Armenian families, 47 Vietnamese families, and 88 Mexican families. Adolescents completed measures of ethnic language proficiency, in-group peer social interaction, and ethnic identity. Parents completed a measure of support for cultural maintenance. Across all groups, ethnic language proficiency and in-group peer interaction predicted ethnic identity, and parental cultural maintenance predicted adolescent ethnic language proficiency. However, because of differences among the groups, a separate model was required for each ethnic group. The results suggest both common processes and group differences in the factors that influence ethnic identity.     

Patterns of family interaction and adolescent sex role concepts

This study examined the relationship between patterns of family interaction and adolescent development of sex role concepts. Sixty-six families of high school seniors completed a measure of daily family activities and a Plan Something Together Task, used to measure individuation in family communication. Adolescents' responses on the sex roles section of the Ego Identity Interview were coded to reflect Block's theory of the stages of development of sex role concepts. Results indicated gender differences in the development of sex role concepts as related to distinctive patterns of family communication and daily activity with the adolescents' mothers and fathers.This work was supported by grants from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (HD-29819 and HD-17983), the Hogg Foundation for Mental Health, and the University Research Institute and Institute of Human Development and Family Studies of the University of Texas at Austin.Received degree from the University of Texas at Austin. Research interests in adolescent development, adolescent mental health, and adolescents in high-risk families. To whom reprint requests should be addressed at School of Social Work, Annex C, University of Maine, Orono, Maine 04469-0124.Received degree from the University of Minnesota. Research interests are in adolescent development within the context of the family and adoptive family relationships.Received degree from the University of Minnesota. Research interests are in the role of ethnicity in adolescent identity development and family relationships.     

Are Family Meals as Good for Youth as We Think They Are? A Review of the Literature on Family Meals as They Pertain to Adolescent Risk Prevention

Regular family meals have been shown to reduce adolescents’ engagement in various risk behaviors. In this article, we comprehensively examine the literature to review the association between family meals and eight adolescent risk outcomes: alcohol, tobacco, marijuana and other drugs; aggressive and/or violent behaviors; poor school performance; sexual behavior; mental health problems; and disordered eating patterns. The majority of the studies reviewed found associations in the relationship between family meals and adolescents’ risk profiles. More specifically, studies reporting significant associations found that adolescents who frequently ate meals with their family and/or parents were less likely to engage in risk behaviors when compared to peers who never or rarely ate meals with their families. Additionally, the influence of family meal frequency on youth risk outcomes appears to be dependent on gender, with family meals being a protective factor for females and males differently, depending on the outcome examined. However, the studies available about family meals and adolescent risk only examined the effect of family meal frequency, and not other components of family meals that contribute to the protective effect, and, thus, hinder the understanding of the mechanisms unique to family meals’ protective characteristics. Regardless of these limitations, the studies examined indicate that family meals may be protective and, therefore, have practical implications for parents, clinicians, and organizations looking to reduce adolescent risk behaviors. However, further examination is needed to better understand the mechanisms that contribute to the protective effect afforded by family meal frequency on adolescents.     

Adolescent psychiatric inpatients: Characteristics,outcome, and comparison between discharged patients from a specialized adolescent unit and nonspecialized units

We have recently studied the outcome of school-aged children treated in day hospital and inpatient psychiatric units using four operationally defined preadmission child and parent/family variables as predictors of outcome. Our studies have provided considerable support for these preadmission variables singly and/or in combination in predicting poor outcome in school-aged children in these hospital settings. The present study describes the prevalence of these variables and their ability to predict outcome in two groups of adolescent psychiatric inpatients in the same hospital: one group placed on a specialized adolescent unit and one group placed on other inpatient psychiatric units. The findings indicate that overall there is a lower prevalence of the preadmission variables in the adolescent group compared to the school-aged inpatient group. In the adolescent group, only the preadmission variable of severe aggressive/destructive behavior predicted poor outcome. There appears to be a greater prevalence of severe behavioral disturbance in the group of adolescents discharged from the specialized adolescent unit compared to adolescents discharged from other psychiatric units, and an associated poorer outcome in the former group. Possible reasons for these findings and their implications for the hospital-based evaluation and treatment of aggressive and severely disturbed adolescents are discussed.This paper was presented in part at the 144th annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association, May 1991.Received M.D. from Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Research interests are outcome of youth treated in psychiatric programs, aggression and conduct disorder, and children of substance-abusing parents.Received M.A. in psychology from the New School for Social Research. Research interests are psychobiology, affective disorders, and metabolic regulation.     

Family processes and adolescent adjustment in intact and remarried families

This study examines whether family processes that predict positive and negative developmental outcomes are the same in intact and remarried families. Surveys were administered to 758 tenth graders from intact families and 95 from stepfather families. Measures of cohesion, democratic decision-making style, permissiveness, and conflict were used to predict self-rated depression, worry, and self-esteem. Remarried and intact families provide similar family environments for permissiveness and democratic decision making. Remarried families are more conflictual and less cohesive than intact families. In both family types, conflict had negative effects, and cohesion and democratic decision-making had positive effects on adolescents' adjustment. In remarried families, but not intact, permissiveness was related to higher self-esteem.Received Ph.D in developmental psychology from The University of Michigan. Research interests include family influences on adolescent identity development and the effects of divorce and remarriage on adolescent adjustment.Received M.S. in child clinical psychology from Pennsylvania State University. Research interests include family processes in stepfamilies and the impact of family structure on adolescent development.     

Family contexts of pubertal timing

This study examined the influence of pubertal timing upon family interactions in normal and psychiatric adolescent samples. An important feature of our approach is its emphasis upon micro-analysis of family behaviors (individual speeches) and family processes (theoretically specified speech pairings). Rather than assume that global family patterns (e.g., power) shift in response to pubertal changes, we follow how types of speeches and speech sequences are associated with different pubertal timing. Using the previously constructed family coding system, the Constrainig and Enabling Coding System, we found that on-time adolescents and their parents differed from both off-time groups (early or late). These results are discussed in terms of current implications and suggestions for future research.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the SRCD Study Group on Timing of Maturation, October, 1983, at the Education Testing Service, Princeton, NJ. This research was supported by NICHD Grant 1 R01 HD18684-01, and an NIMH Research Scientist Award (Dr. Hauser).Received his Ph.D. from Harvard University. Research interest is adolescent development within the family and impact of chronic illness on adolescent development and family interaction.Received her B.A. from Wellesley College. Research interests are in humor and attractiveness.Received his M.A. from Boston University. Research interests are in methodology and statistics.Received Ed.D. from Harvard University. Research interests are in adolescent development within the family, and family coping with stress.Received M.D. from University of Chicago. Research interests are in psychosocial aspects of diabetes.Received Ed.D. from Harvard University. Research interests are in developmental psychopathology, and moral and ego development.Received Ph.D. from Ohio State University. Research interests are in assessment of ego development and family systems.Received Ph.D. from University of Miami. Research interests are in family studies and adolescent development.     

Families with Daughters,Families with Sons: Different Challenges for Family Relationships and Marital Satisfaction?

In a longitudinal study, the links between family relations and marital relations were examined in families with early adolescent children. Over the course of 4 years, 128 mother–father–adolescent triads were investigated annually. They completed questionnaires assessing family climate and marital relationships. Longitudinal analyses revealed that the initially large discrepancies between adolescents' and their parents' perceptions of family cohesion, support, and expressiveness decreased significantly over time. As adolescents approached late adolescence, however, the family members' perceptions of a lowered family closeness increasingly converged. Families with sons experienced stronger emotional distancing than families with daughters. However, the emphasis on adolescent independence was highly similar in families with daughters and sons, as was the extent to which rules and organization determined family life. Mothers and fathers did not depict their marital relationships as particularly critical during their children's early adolescent years. Moreover, in families with daughters, husbands and wives did not experience more marital conflict than in families with sons. The consistent associations revealed between marital communication, family closeness, and the opportunity for personal growth within the family suggest a bilateral focus for the study of parent–adolescent relationships.     

The Influence of Economic Pressure on Emerging Adult Binge Drinking: Testing the Family Stress Model over Time

The Family Stress Model proposes that disrupted family processes may help explain the association between economic adversity and poor child developmental outcomes. In this study, the Family Stress Model was tested across adolescence to emerging adulthood. Participants included 451 rural White youth who participated with their parents from age 13–23 (52% female). The data were analyzed at five developmental time periods with separate pathways for mothers and fathers. The findings reveal for both parents that economic pressure at time 1 (age 13) led to parental emotional distress which was related to harsh couple interaction at time 2 (ages 14 and 15). This marital conflict was related to harsh parenting toward the adolescent (time 2), which was then directly associated with higher levels of offspring drinking when youth were in middle adolescence (age 16) at time 3. Alcohol use in middle adolescence was associated with binge drinking in late adolescence (age 18, time 4) into emerging adulthood (age 23, time 5). Drinking behaviors did not differ for boys and girls. The current results show that economic adversity has an effect on family processes which influence offspring binge drinking patterns in later adolescence that continue into emerging adulthood.     

An 18-Year Model of Family and Peer Effects on Adolescent Drug Use and Delinquency

The interrelationship of family and peer experiences in predicting adolescent problem behaviors was examined in an 18-year longitudinal sample of adolescents (N = 198) from conventional and nonconventional families. Positive associations among early childhood predictors and adolescent problem behaviors were consistent with problem behavior theory. The most powerful predictors of teen drug use and delinquent behaviors were similar behaviors by peers. Peer behaviors, however, were in turn predicted by earlier family-related variables and the quality of peer relationships in childhood. This study provides supporting evidence that strong peer effects in adolescence reflect even earlier processes in childhood and highlight the importance of linkages from early childhood experiences in family and peer contexts to the development of problem behaviors in adolescence. Implications for prevention and intervention programs are discussed.     

Adolescent Daughters’ Romantic Competence: The Role of Divorce,Quality of Parenting,and Maternal Romantic History

This study examined the links between parental divorce, quality of maternal parenting, spousal relationships and middle adolescent romantic competence in 80 mother-adolescent daughter pairs (40 divorced). Mothers were asked to describe their attitudes and behaviors with regard to their daughters’ romantic behavior. In addition, mothers were interviewed about their own romantic experiences when they were at the age of their daughters. Adolescent girls (mean age = 16.98 years; range 16–18) were administered a comprehensive interview about romantic competence. Findings indicated that adolescent girls from divorced families showed lower levels of romantic competence, which were expressed in their behavior, attitudes toward relationships and skill in handling those relationships. Divorce was found to have had an adverse effect on girls’ romantic competence, whereas continued adaptive parenting and spousal relationships alleviated the effect of divorce. Mothers’ coherent representation of their own adolescent romantic experiences also alleviated the effect of divorce on daughters’ romantic behavior. Results show the important role of family relationships in fostering romantic competence among adolescent girls.     

Parenting factors,social skills,and value commitments as precursors to school failure,involvement with deviant peers,and delinquent behavior

Elements of social control theory were combined with social learning theory to construct a model of delinquency which specifies the manner in which parenting factors, social skills, value commitments, and problems in school contribute to association with deviant peers and involvement in delinquent behavior. The model was tested using a sample of 61 families, each of which included a seventh grader. Questionnaire responses and coded videotaped family interaction were employed as measures of study constructs. The results largely supported the proposed model.This work was supported by Research Grants DA 05347 from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, MH 43270 from the National Institute of Mental Health, and MCJ 190572 from the Bureau of Maternal and Child Health, Department of Health and Human Services.Received Ph.D. in sociology from Florida State University. Research interests: etiology of adolescent depression, substance abuse, and delinquency; identification of factors that influence parenting practices; causes and consequences of adolescent and adult homelessness.Received Ph.D. in sociology from Washington State University. Research interests: impact of family and peers upon adolescent value socialization, self-esteem, and perceptions of self-efficacy; street culture among adolescent runaways and adult homeless.Received Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Washington. Research interests: impacft of economic stress upon family dynamics, and relationship between parenting practices and adolescent developmental outcomes.Doctoral candidate in sociology at Iowa State University. Research interests: economic hardship and marital interaction, and determinants and consequences of variation in sibling interaction.     

Family Financial Stress and Adolescent Sexual Risk-Taking: The Role of Self-Regulation

The ability to control one’s emotions, thoughts, and behaviors is known as self-regulation. Family stress and low adolescent self-regulation have been linked with increased engagement in risky sexual behaviors, which peak in late adolescence and early adulthood. The purpose of this study was to assess whether adolescent self-regulation, measured by parent and adolescent self-report and respiratory sinus arrhythmia, mediates or moderates the relationship between family financial stress and risky sexual behaviors. We assessed these relationships in a 4-year longitudinal sample of 450 adolescents (52 % female; 70 % white) and their parents using structural equation modeling. Results indicated that high family financial stress predicts engagement in risky sexual behaviors as mediated, but not moderated, by adolescent self-regulation. The results suggest that adolescent self-regulatory capacities are a mechanism through which proximal external forces influence adolescent risk-taking. Promoting adolescent self-regulation, especially in the face of external stressors, may be an important method to reduce risk-taking behaviors as adolescents transition to adulthood.     

Adolescents’ time use: Effects on substance use,delinquency and sexual activity

Using an integration of social control theory and the routine activity perspective, adolescent time use was examined for effects on problem behaviors. We examined a wide variety of time use categories, including homework, extracurricular activities, sports time, alone time, paid work, housework, television watching, as well as indices of family time and peer time, for their effects on heavy alcohol use, cigarette smoking, illicit drug use, delinquency and sexual activity. The study employed a representative household sample of adolescents (n=606) and took into account important sociodemographic factors – gender, age, race (Black and White), and socioeconomic status. The most important predictors of adolescent problem behaviors were family time and peer time. Family time serves as a protective factor against all five problem behaviors while peer time is a highly significant risk factor for all five problem behaviors. Ph.D. in Sociology from the University at Buffalo. She is a Senior Research Scientist at the Research Institute on Addictions, University at Buffalo, 1021 Main Street, Buffalo, The State University of New York 14203. Her research interests include family influences on the development of adolescent substance use, gambling, and other problem behaviors M.A. in Mathematics from the University of Rochester. He is Project Manager/Data Analyst at the Research Institute on Addictions, University at Buffalo, 1021 Main Street, The State University of New York 14203. His current research interests include advanced data analysis techniques for studies of alcohol, other substance use and gambling behaviors among youth and adults. Ph.D. in Psychology from the University at Buffalo. He is a Senior Research Scientist at the Research Institute on Addictions, University at Buffalo, 1021 Main Street, The State University of New York 14203. His research interests include the substance abuse/crime nexus, the epidemiology of substance abuse, and the etiology and epidemiology of pathological gambling. Ph.D. in Sociology from Yale University. He is Professor and Chair in the Department of Sociology, University at Buffalo, 430 Park Hall, Buffalo, The State University of New York, 14260. His research interests include interpersonal relations in adolescent, family, friendship, and work groups. M.S. in Epidemiology from the University at Buffalo. She is a retired Research Scientist from the Research Institute on Addictions, University at Buffalo, 1021 Main Street, The State University of New York 14203. Her research interests include alcohol and other substance use among adolescents and families     

Parenting Predictors of Early-Adolescents’ Health Behaviors: Simultaneous Group Comparisons Across Sex and Ethnic Groups

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the invariance of predictive relations across early-adolescent sex and ethnic groups regarding parenting factors and externalizing and internalizing problems and victimization. Data (n = 598; 54% female) from a triethnic (Hispanic, non-Hispanic white, and non-Hispanic black) probability sample of fifth graders collected from three sites (Birmingham, AL, Houston, TX, and Los Angeles, CA) were used in the analyses. Simultaneous group structural equation modeling supported the invariance of parenting-early adolescent outcomes across sex and ethnic groups. Parental monitoring and parental norms were relatively robust predictors of early-adolescent externalizing problems and victimization, and to a lesser extent, of internalizing problems. A maternal nurturance by parental monitoring interaction was statistically significant for all outcome behaviors, indicating that higher monitoring in conjunction with higher maternal nurturance was associated with lower levels of early-adolescent problem behaviors. The findings suggest that core parenting factors such as nurturance, monitoring, and normative expectations for early adolescent problem behaviors may serve as a foundation for parenting components of multi-component intervention studies.     

Perceptions of Problem Behavior in Adolescents’ Families: Perceiver,Target, and Family Effects

Considerable research has focused on the reliability and validity of informant reports of family behavior, especially maternal reports of adolescent problem behavior. None of these studies, however, has based their orientation on a theoretical model of interpersonal perception. In this study we used the social relations model (SRM) to examine family members’ reports of each others’ externalizing and internalizing problem behavior. Two parents and two adolescents in 69 families rated each others’ behavior within a round-robin design. SRM analysis showed that within-family perceptions of externalizing and internalizing behaviors are consistently due to three sources of variance; perceiver, target, and family effects. A family/contextual effect on informant reports of problem behavior has not been previously reported.     

Consistency of adolescents' self-report of sexual behavior in a longitudinal study

This study examines three issues relevant to adolescent self-reported sexual behavior: the extent to which adolescents rescind reports of sexual intercourse, changes in reporting of lifetime sexual intercourse, and changes in reported age at first sexual intercourse. Data come from a three-year longitudinal study of health-compromising behaviors among a cohort a 758 rural adolescents. Students completed a self-administered questionnaire on health behaviors annually in eighth, ninth, and tenth grades. Findings show that 88.8% of students in eighth grade and 94.3% in ninth grade who reported having had sexual intercourse gave the same answer in a subsequent year. Approximately 15% of students reported fewer numbers of lifetime sexual intercourse experiences in tenth grade than they did in ninth grade. Age at first sexual intercourse was reported inconsistently by 67% of the students. Inconsistency rates differed by racial-gender groups, question sensitivity, and prior sexual experience.Received Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University. Research interests include adolescent health and early adolescent development.Received Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University. Research interests include personality, stress, and coping.Received Ph.D. from University of Chicago. Research interests include adolescent delinquency and substance use.Received Dr. P.H. from Johns Hopkins University. Research interests include rural adolescents and international health issues.Received Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University. Research interests include adolescent sexuality and contraceptive decision making.     

Monitoring Family System Functioning,Family, and Adolescent Coping in the Context of Residential Treatment

The basic research value of an agency-based information system is a function of its ability to examine and test social science theories, propositions, and hypotheses. This paper employs BOMIS data to test a set of hypotheses regarding the effects of youth coping patterns and family system types on successful program completion and post-release outcomes. The findings have implications for treatment change as well as for family and adolescent development research.