Emotional maltreatment and adolescent friendship quality: Examining the divergent impacts of abuse and neglect on friendship development across gender

Abstract

Background

Emotional maltreatment (i.e., emotional abuse and neglect) has been identified as a risk factor for adolescent's friendship quality; however, it remains unclear whether emotional abuse and neglect differentially affect the development of friendship quality over time.

Objective

This longitudinal study examined the effects of emotional abuse and emotional neglect on the developmental trajectories of friendship quality (positive friendship quality and friend conflict) in Chinese early adolescents, and whether these effects differed between boys and girls.

Participants and setting

The sample included 4863 adolescents (55.6 % boys) with an average age of 10.44 (SD = 0.66) years from a large city in China.

Methods

Participants completed measures of emotional abuse, emotional neglect, and friendship quality at baseline, with friendship quality assessed at three six-month follow-ups. Latent growth curve modeling was applied to examine the longitudinal relations.

Results

(a) Both emotional abuse and emotional neglect were significantly associated with lower initial levels of positive friendship quality (β = −0.081/−0.452, p_s < 0.001) and higher initial levels of friend conflict (β = 0.323/0.230, p_s < 0.001); (b) emotional abuse predicted decreases in both positive friendship quality and friend conflict (β = −0.080/−0.164, p_s < 0.05), especially for boys; (c) emotional neglect predicted increases in positive friendship quality (β = 0.205, p < 0.001)

Conclusions

These results highlight the distinct impact of emotional abuse and emotional neglect on the development of friendship quality during early adolescence, suggesting that friendships may compensate for neglected adolescents' needs for intimate relationships.