Conflictive Engagement, Positive Affect, and Menarche in Families with Seventh-Grade Girls

Abstract

Prior research has established that temporary perturbations characterize parent-daughter relations around menarche. This study was designed to determine whether the observed perturbations are indicative of conflictive engagement, operationally defined as sequential reciprocity of interruptions and disagreements, and to examine the affective nature of such behaviors. Sequential analyses were applied to the observed behavior of 111 intact families with firstborn seventh-grade girls (modal age = 12 years old) who participated in a structured family interaction task. Results indicated that conflictive engagement with parents is more frequent shortly after menarche, especially in the mother-daughter dyad. Withdrawal of positive affect also was associated with menarcheal status; in the mother-daughter dyad, interruptions and disagreements were less often responded to with positive affect for the more mature groups. It is suggested that because of the nature of the interpersonal and intrapsychic processes occurring in the family around menarche, conflict may facilitate familial adaptation to pubertal change and make moderate levels of conflict normative in healthy families.

The Organization and Dynamics of Adolescent Conflict with Parents and Friends

“…Second, our study did not examine potential individual differences in adolescent conflict dynamics. Developmental processes such as puberty influence parent‐child conflict reciprocity (Holmbeck & Hill, 1991) and may similarly impact disagreement dynamics. Third, unlike relationships with parents, little is known about the content of disagreements between adolescent friends (Laursen & Collins, 1994), so it is possible that omissions to the list of topics used to assay conflict may have introduced systematic biases in reports across relationships.…”

Reconsidering Changes in Parent-Child Conflict across Adolescence: A Meta-Analysis

“…The average of these standardized scores was then converted back to an effect size. In this manner, five studies qualifying for the puberty meta-analyses were consolidated into two independent samples: (1) findings from the Hill laboratory include data from participants in three research reports (Hill & Holmbeck, 1987;Holmbeck & Hill, 1991;Updegrove, 1988), and (2) findings from the Steinberg laboratory include data from participants in two research reports (Steinberg, 1987(Steinberg, , 1988.…”

Parents and Peers in Relation to Early Adolescent Problem Behavior

“…Early adolescence is a time of transformation in parent‐adolescent relationships. During this time, conflict between parents and their developing children potentially serves an adaptive function by signaling parents and youth that relationship structures and processes require attention and redefinition (Holmbeck & Hill, 1991). As such, most families navigate needed transformations without disabling acrimony (Paikoff & Brooks‐Gunn, 1991).…”