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Poster #180 - USA and Portuguese Young Adolescents’ Perceptions of Their Relationships With Their Mothers, Fathers and Best Friends

Thu, March 21, 4:00 to 5:15pm, Baltimore Convention Center, Floor: Level 1, Exhibit Hall B

Integrative Statement

Given that social relationships are defined and regulated by cultural norms and values, there is a need to consider how parent-child relationships and friendships are manifested in various cultures, and how the underlying provisions of these relationships are perceived and evaluated by individuals within different cultures (Rubin et al., 2010). The primary question asked in the current study was whether some relationship constructs/provisions are viewed as more or less valuable and acceptable in two different cultures. We also asked whether the perceived qualities of given relationships with mothers, fathers, and best friends influence the extent to which youth are satisfied with those dyadic relationships.
In the USA, parents are thought to wield greater power than children; with the onset of adolescence, power structure becomes less vertical and more balanced. In LatinX cultures, power structure between parents and children is thought to remain asymmetrical (Youniss, 1980). Additionally, American culture is considered to be biased toward the socialization of independence by encouraging autonomy and assertiveness. In southern European cultures, there is purported to be a greater emphasis on conformity, compliance, respect for authority figures, and interdependence in social relationships (Hui & Triandis, 1986). Thus, one might expect that as American youth enter adolescence, they become increasingly reliant on close friends and less so on parents; in southern Europe, youth may continue to be more reliant on parents than friends for such relationship provisions as emotional closeness, affection, and confidence (e.g., Nunes et al., 2014). Moreover, in the USA, if adolescents perceive parents as attempting to maintain a vertical power relationship, one might surmise that they would be dissatisfied with the relationship. In southern Europe, the maintenance of a vertical parent-child power relationship may not be associated with dissatisfaction.
We compared the perceived relationship provisions of USA and Portuguese adolescents with parents and best friends and examined the influence of perceived relationship qualities on the satisfaction of young adolescents’ relationships with mothers, fathers and best friends. The sample comprised 347 American (170 boys) and 360 Portuguese (176 boys) adolescents of comparable age. Participants completed the Network of Relationships Inventory (Furman & Buhrmester, 1985).
Table 1 reveals the following highlights (see Table 1 for additional significant findings): Adolescents from both countries perceived their relationships with parents to be more negative and imbalanced in power than their relationships with friends; however, the magnitude of the differences was higher in USA. Adolescents from both countries tended to be more satisfied with their relationships with mothers and best friends than with their relationships with fathers. However, American adolescents tended to be more satisfied with their relationships with best friends than with their relationships with mothers, whereas Portuguese adolescents perceived their relationships with mothers as being as satisfactory as their relationships with best friends. Table 2 reveals that as perceived negativity/conflict increased, satisfaction with the mother-child relationship decreased; this finding was more apparent among American than Portuguese youth. Further, as perceived friendship support increased, perceived friendship satisfaction increased; this relation was stronger in Portugal than in USA.

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