Linking coercive parent-adolescent interactions to coercion in adult romantic relationships: Longitudinal associations across contexts

• In Event: Poster Session 08
  In Poster Session: PS 08 Topic - Social Relationships

Abstract

Parent-adolescent relationships play an important role in the development of early adult romantic relationships (Fosco et al., 2016). Negative interactions in family settings can spill over to other relational contexts. One feature of low-quality relationships is coercion - a reciprocal dynamic of using punitive and controlling behaviors to resolve conflicts, which in turn, may reinforce children’s aversive behaviors (Patterson et al., 1992). Coercive interaction patterns can be learned in adolescence and may affect subsequent relationships with partners (Ha et al., 2019). Coercive interactions in romantic relationships are important to investigate because it may escalate into intimate partner violence (IPV) and pose risks for mental health problems (Kim et al., 2016). Less is known about the transactional effect of coercion across developmental stages and contexts. The current study sought to examine the longitudinal association between coercion in parent-adolescent interactions and couple interactions in early adulthood. Specifically, coercion was captured on both 1) a micro level using state space grids (SSG) analysis (Granic & Hollenstein, 2003) to reflect the real-time dynamics of coercive interactions and 2) a macro level using global impressions of coercive behaviors during dyadic interactions.

Data were drawn from a larger study, which is a randomized controlled trial of the Family Check-Up intervention (Dishion & Kavanagh, 2003). This study focused on 230 adults who were in a committed relationship at ages 28-30 (T2). They participated in a series of parent-child interactions with their mothers at ages 16-17 (T1) and couple interactions with their partners at T2. Interactions in both contexts were coded in real-time using the Relationship Affect Coding System (Peterson et al., 2008), which captured affect, verbal, and physical behaviors. These micro-social codes were combined to create six behavior clusters, including positive, neutral, no talk, negative, directive, and ignore. Each dyad’s behaviors were visualized using SSG (Figure 1). The duration of parents and adolescents within reciprocal negative states was referred to as dyadic coercion (same for couples). In addition, coders provided macro-ratings of observed coercive behaviors in the couple interactions. Therefore, both micro-coding and macro-coding of coercion were used to create the latent variable indicating dyadic coercion in T1 and T2. Child gender, race, risk status, and intervention status were covariates.

The longitudinal model with latent constructs was tested in Mplus 8. The standardized coefficients and p-values are presented in Figure 2. The model had an adequate model fit. Dyadic coercion between adolescents and their mothers was significantly predictive of dyadic coercion between romantic couples in early adulthood. Also, adolescents’ risk status and race were negatively associated with couple coercion such that adolescents with higher risks and/or with racial minority status tended to experience more coercive interactions with their partners.

Longitudinal associations between coercive parent-adolescent interactions and coercion in adult romantic relationships were found. This is remarkable since it involved a period of 15 years and highlighted the stability of coercive interaction patterns over time across contexts. The findings have important implications for prevention and intervention studies by identifying family-based precursors of coercive adult romantic relationships.

Authors

• Jingchen Zhang, University of Delaware
  Presenting Author

• Timothy F Piehler, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities
  Non-Presenting Author

• Thao Ha, Arizona State University
  Non-Presenting Author