Adolescents’, mothers’, and fathers’ gendered coping strategies during conflict: Youth and parent influences on conflict resolution and psychopathology

Abstract

We observed gendered coping strategies and conflict resolution outcomes used by adolescents and parents during a conflict discussion task to evaluate associations with current and later adolescent psychopathology. We studied 137 middle-to-upper-middle class predominantly Caucasian families of adolescents (aged 11–16 years, 65 males) who represented a range of psychological functioning including normative (~1/3) sub-clinical (~1/3) and clinical (~1/3) levels of problems. Adolescent coping strategies played key roles both in the extent to which parent-adolescent dyads resolved conflict and in the trajectory of psychopathology symptom severity over a two-year period. Gender-prototypic adaptive coping strategies were observed in parents but not youth, i.e. more problem-solving by fathers than mothers and more regulated emotion-focused coping by mothers than fathers. Youth-mother dyads more often achieved full resolution of conflict than youth-father dyads. There were generally not bidirectional effects among youth and parents’ coping across the discussion except boys’ initial use of angry/hostile coping predicted fathers’ angry/hostile coping. The child was more influential than the parent on conflict resolution. This extended to exacerbation/alleviation of psychopathology over two years: higher conflict resolution mediated the association of adolescents’ use of problem-focused coping with decreases in symptom severity over time. Lower conflict resolution mediated the association of adolescents’ use of angry/hostile emotion coping with increases in symptom severity over time. Implications of findings are considered within a broadened context of the nature of coping and conflict resolution in youth-parent interactions, as well as how these processes impact on youth well-being and dysfunction over time.

Individual and Day-to-Day Differences in Active Coping Predict Diurnal Cortisol Patterns among Early Adolescent Girls

“…This interactive influence of coping and stress is in line with the hypothesized stress buffering role of active coping efforts, which may be limited at higher levels of stress (Grant et al 2003; Compas et al 2001). This finding is also consistent with prior literature showing that girls who tend to actively respond when facing interpersonal stress are protected from poor adjustment and psychopathology (Marceau et al 2014), but such active efforts may not prove as useful under more chronically stressful conditions (Compas et al 1997). Based on the present findings, messages about using active coping strategies should acknowledge that the most adaptive disposition of responding to chronic stress likely includes some degree of intrapersonal flexibility in which individuals alter responses depending on level and type of stress exposure (Aldao et al 2015).…”

“…Indeed, numerous studies have demonstrated that active coping buffers adolescents from the adverse outcomes typically associated with stressful circumstances (Dumont and Provost 1999; Herman-Stahl and Petersen 1996; Marceau et al 2014). However, whether certain coping responses can be utilized effectively also depends on the type and severity of stress exposure (Compas et al 2001; Graber and Sontag 2009).…”

Adapting to the changing needs of adolescents: parenting practices and challenges to sensitive attunement

“…Among families with adolescents diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes, collaborative communication predicted improved management of symptoms over the subsequent 12 months. By contrast, markers of non-cooperative communication, which included reciprocated hostile exchanges 32, 28 or overinvolved parenting that failed to engage the adolescent 33 , contributed to increased internalizing and externalizing symptoms.…”

“…Cooperative negotiation of goal conflicts increases the adolescent’s trust in the parent and the likelihood that lines of communication will be open 26, 27 . Parents’ abilities to maintain open communication have been most frequently tested with observations of how parents and adolescents discuss commonly occurring topics such as household rules, curfew, money and siblings 28 . The ability of parents to supportively summarize or acknowledge their adolescent’s point of view has been consistently associated with more cooperative communication, more relationship satisfaction and better conflict resolution 29, 26, 30 .…”

Parental brain‐derived neurotrophic factor genotype, child prosociality, and their interaction as predictors of parents’ warmth

“…In addition, child influences have been shown to differ according to the parent's sex (Besnard et al., 2013; Marceau et al., 2015). For example, Karreman, van Tuijl, van Aken, and Deković (2008) have shown that mothers’ use of positive and negative control differed according to the child's level of effortful control, while fathers’ use of the same parenting dimensions did not.…”