Family transitions during the adolescent transition: implications for parenting.

Abstract

This study explored how family transitions affect parenting practices in a sample of 7,000 ethnically diverse students in 9th, 10th, or 11th grade over a period of 2 years. Adolescent perceptions of parental control and parental responsiveness were assessed in three groups: (1) adolescents moving into mother-custody households following a marital separation or divorce, (2) adolescents from stable never-divorced households, and (3) adolescents from stable mother-custody households. The study examined pre- and posttransition data to determine whether adolescents in newly formed single-parent families experienced a larger drop in parental control and responsiveness than did adolescents in stable nondivorced and stable mother-custody households. Adolescents from all family types reported significant declines in behavioral control, but not parental responsiveness. However, the lack of family-type differences contrasts sharply with findings from the childhood-divorce literature. Findings suggest that adolescent individuation may overshadow family-type differences during middle adolescence. As expected, boys reported lower parental control than did girls. Ethnic differences revealed that European American adolescents reported the highest levels of parental responsiveness, and African American adolescents reported the highest levels of parental control. Contextual and individual pathways in adolescence are discussed.