Stress With Parents and Peers: How Adolescents From Six Nations Cope With Relationship Stress

Abstract

This study investigated how 2000 adolescents from middle‐class families in six countries perceived and coped with parent‐related and peer‐related stress. Adolescents from Costa Rica, Korea, and Turkey perceived parent‐related stress to be greater than peer‐related stress, whereas stress levels in both relationship types were similar in the Czech Republic, Germany, and Pakistan. Female adolescents predominantly reported higher levels of peer‐related stress than male adolescents. Adolescents in all countries used negotiating and support‐seeking to cope with relationship stress more often than emotional outlet or withdrawal. Withdrawal occurred more often to deal with parent‐related than with peer‐related stress. Results suggest that adolescents across countries competently coped with relationship stress. However, patterns of what adolescents perceived as stressful and how they coped varied between countries.

The Source and Impact of Appearance Teasing: An Examination by Sex and Weight Status Among Early Adolescents From the Czech Republic

“…At the individual level, they could help to not base self‐esteem on physical appearance but on other domains, like academic competence. Given that appearance teasing is widespread and more subtle and less overt ways of appearance teasing could persist, intervention initiatives should strength children's coping strategies and self‐efficacy to buffer the impact of these experiences, especially among girls and overweight adolescents . Finally, these initiatives should be integrated with other initiatives on health promotion.…”

“…Given that appearance teasing is widespread and more subtle and less overt ways of appearance teasing could persist, intervention initiatives should strength children's coping strategies and self-efficacy to buffer the impact of these experiences, especially among girls and overweight adolescents. 12,55,60,61 Finally, these initiatives should be integrated with other initiatives on health promotion. For instance, integrating the message that obesity is caused by several factors and is not exclusively under personal control.…”

The Relationship Between Autonomy and Relatedness and Adolescents’ Adrenocortical and Cardiovascular Stress Response

“…Thus, our findings mark an important contribution to the literature by demonstrating that a normative developmental process for parents and adolescents may be stressful when parents and youth have difficulty with this renegotiation of power. Furthermore, our research contributes to existing research that has relied on self-report data to suggest that autonomy and relatedness may be stressful for youth (Gure et al 2006; Seiffge-Krenke et al 2013) by providing alternative measures to demonstrate an association between a key developmental task and adolescents’ neurobiological stress response. As this is the first study to examine the effect of autonomy and relatedness on adolescents’ neurobiological response to stress, replication is needed and will provide an important area for future research.…”

“…Research using self-report has found that arguments with parents and the development of autonomy are rated as very stressful by youth (Gure et al 2006; Mortimer and Call 2001, Seiffge-Krenke et al 2013). Furthermore, researchers have suggested that families characterized by parental overregulation of children’s behavior may result in adolescents failing to regulate their responses to stress properly (McEwen and Seeman 1999) and that adolescents who perceive less support for autonomy development are more likely to use negative coping strategies when faced with stress (Seiffge-Krenke and Pakalniskiene 2010).…”

20201218

“…As a result, mental health theories have been extended to global populations to test their applicability. In some cases, current theories have been further confirmed (e.g., Lai et al, 2014;Gupta et al, 2013), whereas in other cases they have revealed cross-cultural differences, resulting in the need to reformulate current theories (e.g., Neese, Pittman, & Hunemorder, 2013;Seiffge-Krenke et al, 2013). This has contributed to the maturation of developmental theories --such that the individual-context fit, and the bidirectional nature development are now being investigated (e.g., Lerner, 1995;Abo-Zena & Ahmed, 2014;Hafen, Spilker, Chango, Marston, & Allen, 2014).…”