Marital Quality and Parent-Adolescent Relationships: Components of Relationship Strenghs in Married-Couple Families. ASPE Research Brief

摘要

Due to sharp increases in the divorce rate and the increasing numbers of unmarried couples cohabitating in the United States, numerous research studies have examined the effects of marital dissolution on children. However, in 2006 nearly 50 million children were living with two, married parents, about two-thirds of all children in the country. The purpose of this research brief is to explain the relationship context of adolescents who live in married couple families. Specifically, we assess the marital quality of the adolescents biological parents (and step-parents) by examining how supportive and conflict behaviors combine within the couple relationship. We also examine how support and conflict operate in parent-adolescent relationships. These separate measures of couple and parent-adolescent relationships are then combine to form new categories that describe the relationship context within which adolescents transition into young adulthood. The overall goal of the research is to determine whether marital quality and parent-adolescent relationships are associated with particular outcomes for adolescents. This analysis is unique in that it relies on the perceptions of parent marital and parent-adolescent relationship quality from the adolescents perspective. Additionally, this study uses a nationally representative data set to examine these couple and parent-adolescent relationships.