Journal of Youth and Adolescence最新文献

Despite increasing evidence that discrepancies between parents' and adolescents' perceptions of their relationship contribute to adolescent depression, little is known about how these perceptual gaps evolve across developmental stages of adolescence and how they relate to depression at varying ages. This study addressed that gap by examining how perceptual (in)congruence in parent-adolescent closeness and conflict relates to depressive symptoms across early, middle, and late adolescence. A total of 1893 parent-adolescent dyads participated in this study, including 779 in the early adolescent group (adolescents: Mage = 9.86, SDage = 0.99, 48.8% female; parents: Mage = 38.08, SDage = 5.09, 76.6% mothers), 569 in the middle adolescent group (adolescents: Mage = 12.90, SDage = 0.97, 48.3% female; parents: Mage = 40.73, SDage = 5.22, 70% mothers), and 545 in the late adolescent group (adolescents: Mage = 15.46, SDage = 1.07, 53% female; parents: Mage = 42.66, SDage = 4.48, 69% mothers). Polynomial regression and response surface analyses indicated that adolescents' perceptions, particularly of conflict, were more strongly associated with depressive symptoms than were parents' perceptions. The effects of perceptual (in)congruence also varied by age. In early and middle adolescence, congruently low closeness or high conflict was linked to more severe symptoms, with the highest severity occurring when adolescents perceived the relationship more negatively than parents. In late adolescence, large perceptual gaps, again driven by adolescents' more negative views, were associated with marked increases in depressive symptoms. These findings highlight adolescents' conflict perceptions as the strongest factor related to depressive symptoms and identify late adolescence as the period of greatest vulnerability to perceptual incongruence.

Exposure to peer victimization is often predictive of increased psychosocial problems in adolescents, but parenting has been identified as a critical mitigating factor of these negative effects. Among parenting behaviors, emotion socialization plays a vital role in adolescents' emotional and social development. However, its specific role in the context of peer victimization and adolescent adjustment is unclear. To address this, this study examined whether adolescent-perceived parental responses to children's negative emotions moderate the longitudinal predictive effects of bullying victimization on adolescent psychosocial problems over eight months. The study included 1007 Chinese adolescents with a mean age of 14.75 years (SD = 0.60). Female participants accounted for 53.5% of the sample. The results showed that mothers were perceived to engage more often than fathers in supportive responses, emotion minimization, and didactic talk. Being bullied positively predicted adolescents' internalizing problems when they perceived maternal support as excessively high, but it negatively predicted adolescents' externalizing problems when they perceived maternal support as very low. No significant relationship was found between being bullied and adolescents' problems when maternal support was perceived as moderate. These findings suggest that maternal supportive responses to adolescents' negative emotions moderate the association between bullying victimization and adolescent psychosocial problems and should be considered in prevention and intervention efforts.

Academic success is a key developmental competency that is strongly emphasized within Chinese American families, stressing the need to understand the cultural, social, and family processes that influence its development among Chinese American youth. The current study took an ecological and family systems approach in investigating the development of Chinese American adolescents' high school grade point averages (GPA) from early to middle adolescence. Participants included fathers, mothers, and adolescents (54% female, 46% male) from Waves 1 (W1; early adolescence) and 2 (W2; middle adolescence) of a study on 444 Chinese American families from a northern urban area on the west coast of the United States (US). Adolescents were 12 to 15 years old at W1 (data collection in 2002), with W2 data collection occurring approximately four years later (2006). Structural equation modeling examined simultaneous paths from fathers' and mothers' cultural orientations to adolescents' GPAs four years later, through fathers' and mothers' acculturative stress, fathers' and mothers' supportive parenting behaviors, and combined parent-adolescent alienation. Cultural orientation, stress, parenting, and alienation were assessed through parent-report and adolescent-report measures, whereas GPA was taken from school transcripts. Wald's tests examined differences between mother-adolescent and father-adolescent processes. Mothers' bicultural and more US cultural orientations (compared to more Chinese) indirectly predicted greater increases in adolescents' GPAs, through lower mothers' acculturative stress, greater mothers' supportive parenting behaviors, and lower alienation. Parallel father indirect effects were not significant. Results demonstrate how Chinese American adolescents' academic achievement is influenced by their families' experiences across cultural, social, and family systems, with fathers and mothers playing significantly different roles. Further investigations of the ways parents influence their child's academic development, especially those specifically relevant to Chinese American fathers, are needed.