Individual Submission Summary
Share...

Direct link:

Does it Work Both Ways? Examining Parent-Adolescent Connectedness for Parent and Adolescent Well-Being

Thu, March 21, 2:15 to 3:45pm, Baltimore Convention Center, Floor: Level 3, Room 319

Integrative Statement

Study of positive well-being (PWB), such as positive affect, life satisfaction, meaning in life, and feeling engaged in activities of life has yielded compelling evidence indicating PWB is related to a host of physical health, longevity, and positive adaptation outcomes, as well as lower risk for engaging in risk-taking behaviors or high-risk sexual behavior (Valois et al., 2002; 2006) and reduced risk of anxiety, depression, and substance use (Vilhjalmusson & Thorlindsson, 1992). Thus, understanding factors that promote PWB have great potential for public health impact; however, such work is tremendously underdeveloped in the context of family relationships and for adolescent and parent development.

Research is needed to better understand how family relationships may promote PWB. Preliminary evidence suggests that closeness, connection, and support in parent-adolescent relationships may foster adolescent PWB (Proctor et al., 2009); however, longitudinal data are sorely lacking from this empirical literature. The impact of family relationships for parent well-being is even less well understood, although the existing evidence supports the view that close, supportive parent-child relationships foster parent PWB (Nelson et al. 2013). Less studied is the benefits of parenting adolescents, a developmental period earmarked as challenging for parents.

Guided by family systems principles, this study examined the mutual benefits of a close, supportive parent-adolescent relationship for parent and adolescent daily PWB using daily reports that parents and their 9th or 10th Grade adolescents (N = 151) provided each evening for 21 consecutive days on their feelings of connectedness with the other (e.g., “I felt loved by my [child/parent] today”) and four indicators of well-being (i.e., positive affect, life satisfaction, meaning and purpose in life, feeling engaged/interested in activities of living).

We applied an actor-partner interdependence multilevel modeling approach to the daily diary data to simultaneously examine within- and between-family actor and partner effects of connectedness on parents’ and adolescents’ daily well-being. Results are reported in Table 1. On days when parents felt more connected to their adolescent than usual, they experienced higher positive affect, life satisfaction, meaning/purpose in life, and engagement. Above and beyond this actor effect, there was also a partner effect. On days when adolescents felt more connected to their parents than usual, parents felt greater PWB (all four measures). Paralleling the pattern of associations seen for parents, on days when adolescents felt more connected to their parents than usual, they experienced higher positive affect, life satisfaction, meaning/purpose in life, and engagement; moreover, partner effects indicated that on days when parents felt more connected to the adolescent than usual, adolescents had higher PWB (all four measures).

These findings suggest that, indeed, it “works both ways”, meaning parents and adolescents alike benefit from a close, connected relationship. Future research should further consider the benefits of family relationships for both parent and adolescent PWB. Family-based interventions, typically focused on adolescent outcomes, may also promote enhanced parent PWB.  

Authors