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

Abstract

A series of meta-analyses addresses whether and how parent-child conflict changes during adolescence and factors that moderate patterns of change. The meta-analyses summarize results from studies of change in parent-child conflict as a function of either adolescent age or pubertal maturation. Three types of parent-adolescent conflict are examined: conflict rate, conflict affect, and total conflict (rate and affect combined). The results provide little support for the commonly held view that parentchild conflict rises and then falls across adolescence, although conclusions regarding pubertal change as well as conflict affect are qualified by the limited number of studies available. Two diverging sets of linear effects emerged, one indicating a decline in conflict rate and total conflict with age and the other indicating an increase in conflict affect with both age and pubertal maturation. In age metaanalyses, conflict rate and total conflict decline from early adolescence to mid-adolescence and from mid-adolescence to late adolescence; conflict affect increases from early adolescence to midadolescence. Puberty meta-analyses revealed only a positive linear association between conflict affect and pubertal maturation. Effect-size patterns varied little in follow-up analyses of potential moderating variables, implying similarities in the direction (although not the magnitude) of conflict across parent-adolescent dyads, reporters, and measurement procedures.

Toward Developing Laboratory-Based Parent–Adolescent Conflict Discussion Tasks that Consistently Elicit Adolescent Conflict-Related Stress Responses: Support from Physiology and Observed Behavior

“…In sum, we hope that results from this study offer guidance for researchers on how to design parent-adolescent conflict discussion tasks that may be able to measure the mechanism of the link between conflict and adolescent maladjustment by eliciting an adolescent stress response. Further, results support the idea that despite increases of general negative affect during adolescence (Somerville, Jones, & Casey, 2010), and of affective intensity of parent-adolescent conflict in particular (Laursen, Coy, & Collins, 1998), not all adolescents experience aversive conflict with their parents, and thus context (i.e., presence or absence of legitimately stressful topic, level of baseline conflict) matters in measuring this conflict (Donenberg & Weisz, 1997). …”

The Language of Memory: Narrating Memories of Parents and Friends

“…The research participants are recalling events that date from early adolescence on, and parent-child relationships have been shown to become more characterized by conflict and negativity as children progress from childhood into adolescence [10,17], and intense anger is more frequent in parentchild than friend interactions [18]. Late adolescents and young adults, which is the age of our participants, are establishing independence and identity [56], and, for some, this results in contentious interaction with parents [57].…”

“…Although they did not assess narratives about parents, it makes sense that emotion words in narratives about parents versus friends would differ since short memory reports (elicited by a memory fluency task) about parents are more negative than those about friends from this period of an individual's life [14]. Furthermore, relationships with parents are more likely to be conflictual and affectively negative at this age [10,17] and include more intense anger [18]. We expected that the proportion of negative emotion words would be especially high in males' narratives about parents, in keeping with the gender differences in parent-child relationships discussed above.…”

Mother-Daughter Conflict among 18 - 21 Years Old Adolescents: Structure, Causes and Management

“…Family politics weighed heavily in mothers' favor. Laursen, Coy & Collins [23] suggest that adolescent independent seeking behaviors results in disequilibrium in mother-daughter relationships. However, we did not explore the state of mother-daughter relationships …”