This study examines how often adolescents interact with family members and how adolescents feel when spending time with parents, nonresident parents, stepparents, siblings, and extended family members. Adolescents respond to whom they spend time with, and how adolescents feel during social interactions with family has implications for adolescent relationships. Family structure remains a crucial dimension of heterogeneity in adolescent life, and family systems theory suggests family structure could differentially shape adolescent emotional functioning and social development due to differences in family-level contexts. However, less work has evaluated heterogeneity in social interactions and adolescent responses to family interactions stemming from variation in the home context. Using a large, nationally representative data sample of adolescents from the American Time Use Survey (N ϭ 1,735), this study employs a within-group analysis to separately examine feelings of meaningfulness, happiness, sadness, and stress during social interactions for adolescents living in nuclear homes, single-parent homes, and stepparent homes. Results suggest adolescents in nuclear homes benefited from interactions with parents and were less affected by siblings and extended family members. On the other hand, adolescents in nonnuclear homes benefited from interactions with nonresident parents, older siblings, or extended family members, giving support to compensation models of family interactions. The study informs parents, clinicians, and policymakers designing interventions for adolescents, because it more precisely conveys information about which family members positively influence adolescent emotional responses.
For decades, researchers and the general public have debated whether children without siblings differ from children with siblings in ways that are meaningful for development. One area that is underexplored in the literature on only children versus children with siblings concerns time use and emotional states in alone time and in social interactions. Resource dilution theory and the prior literature suggests that adolescent only children and adolescents with siblings may differ in some social interactions, such as in time with parents, but not in others, such as in time alone, due to offsetting effects or the universality of certain experiences among adolescents. This study tested these arguments by comparing companionship patterns and four emotional states (happiness, sadness, stress, and meaningfulness) among adolescents (ages 15-18) without siblings (N = 465) and adolescents with siblings (N = 2513) in the nationally representative American Time Use Survey (2003)(2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010)(2011)(2012)(2013)(2014)(2015)(2016)(2017). Relative to adolescents with siblings, adolescents without siblings spent more time alone, similar amounts of time with peers, and more time exclusively with parents. Only children were not as happy when spending time alone and with peers as adolescents with siblings, but their emotions in these settings were not more negative or less meaningful. In most other social interactions, emotional states were similar between adolescents with and without siblings. These findings show that adolescents with and without siblings differed mainly in their companionship patterns within the household and in their levels of happiness when alone and with peers.
Objective This study examined differences in time with family among Latino/a, White, and Black youth and variation among Latino/a youth by gender and immigrant household status. Background Familismo and differences in socio‐structural characteristics suggest that Latino/a youth will spend more time with family than White and Black peers. Gender socialization norms, especially marianismo, could also promote family time for Latina girls. Finally, theories of immigrant incorporation suggest that Latino/a family time will be highest in immigrant households. Method This study used the nationally representative American Time Use Survey (2003–2019) to analyze household family contact patterns among Latino/a, White, and Black youth (ages 15–18; n = 9501). The study further examined differences by gender and, among Latinos/as, by immigrant household status. Results Latino/a youth spent more time with siblings than White and Black peers due to a higher number of siblings in the household. Latina girls spent substantially more unadjusted and adjusted time with parents and siblings than White and Black girls and Latino boys. There was little variation in family time patterns among Latinos/as by gender‐by‐immigrant household status. Conclusion Family contact patterns suggest that both familismo and marianismo are salient in the lives of Latino/a youth, which has key implications for these youths' lives and transitions to adulthood.
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