Mind your own business! Longitudinal relations between perceived privacy invasion and adolescent-parent conflict.

Empathy plays a key role in maintaining close relationships and promoting pro-social conflict resolution. However, research has not addressed the potential emotional cost of adolescents’ high empathy, particularly when relationships are characterized by more frequent conflict. The present six-year longitudinal study (N = 467) investigated whether conflict with parents predicted emotion dysregulation more strongly for high-empathy adolescents than for lower-empathy adolescents. Emotion dysregulation was operationalized at both the experiential level, using mood diary data collected for three weeks each year, and at the dispositional level, using annual self-report measures. In line with predictions, we found that more frequent adolescent-parent conflict predicted greater day-to-day mood variability and dispositional difficulties in emotion regulation for high-empathy adolescents, but not for average- and low-empathy adolescents. Mood variability and difficulties in emotion regulation, in turn, also predicted increased conflict with parents. These links were not moderated by empathy. Moreover, our research allowed for a novel investigation of the interplay between experiential and dispositional emotion dysregulation. Day-to-day mood variability predicted increasing dispositional difficulties in emotion regulation over time, which suggests that experiential dysregulation becomes consolidated into dispositional difficulties in emotion regulation. Moderated mediation analyses revealed that, for high-empathy adolescents, conflict was a driver of this dysregulation consolidation process. Finally, emotion dysregulation played a role in over-time conflict maintenance for high-empathy adolescents. This suggests that, through emotion dysregulation, high empathy may paradoxically also contribute to maintaining negative adolescent-parent interactions. Our research indicates that high empathy comes at a cost when adolescent-parent relationships are characterized by greater negativity.

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The connection of observed hostile family conflict to adolescents' developing autonomy and relatedness with parents

Development and Psychopathology ◽

10.1017/s0954579400007173 ◽

1996 ◽

Vol 8 (2) ◽

pp. 425-442 ◽

Cited By ~ 37

Author(s):

Joseph P. Allen ◽

Stuart T. Hauser ◽

Thomas G. O'Connor ◽

Kathy L. Bell ◽

Charlene Eickholt

Keyword(s):

Observational Data ◽

Marital Conflict ◽

Family Conflict ◽

Parenting Behaviors ◽

Family Interaction ◽

Prior History ◽

History Of ◽

Adolescent Parent ◽

Parent Conflict ◽

Over Time

AbstractThis study examined the link between hostile conflict in families with adolescents and adolescents' efforts to establish autonomy and relatedness in interactions with parents in both normal and psychiatrically impaired groups. Longitudinal, observational data were obtained by coding family interaction tasks involving 53 adolescents and their two parents at age 14 and age 16 years. Measures were obtained for hostile adolescent-parent conflict, hostile marital conflict, and indices of adolescents' success or difficultly in establishing autonomy and relatedness in interactions with parents. Relative increases in adolescent-parent hostile conflict from age 14 to 16 years were predicted by adolescents' behaviors actively undermining autonomy in disagreements with parents at age 14 years. Hostile marital conflict observed by the adolescent at age 14 years predicted adolescent withdrawal from the hostile parent over time, a prediction that was not mediated by observed parenting behaviors. Difficulties in establishing autonomy and relatedness were linked to prior history of psychiatric difficulty. A developmental view of conflict as both reflecting and predicting difficulties in adolescents' establishing autonomy and relatedness in interactions with parents is proposed.

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Adolescent-Parent conflict in Hong Kong and Shenzhen: A comparison of youth in two cultural contexts

International Journal of Behavioral Development ◽

10.1080/01650250244000209 ◽

2003 ◽

Vol 27 (3) ◽

pp. 201-211 ◽

Cited By ~ 71

Author(s):

Jenny Yau ◽

Judith Smetana

Keyword(s):

Hong Kong ◽

Interpersonal Relationships ◽

Chinese Adolescents ◽

Chinese Youth ◽

Cultural Contexts ◽

12Th Grade ◽

Adolescent Autonomy ◽

Adolescent Parent ◽

Parent Conflict ◽

Personal Jurisdiction

This study examined adolescent–parent conflict among 188 5th-, 7th-, 10th-, and 12th-grade Chinese adolescents, 93 from Hong Kong and 95 from Shenzhen, PRC. Individually interviewed Chinese adolescents reported disagreements with parents over everyday issues, primarily choice of activities, schoolwork, interpersonal relationships, and chores. Conflicts were relatively few in number, moderate in frequency, and mild in intensity, and across contexts, conflicts were more intense in early adolescence (5th and 7th grades) than in late adolescence (12th grade). There were more conflicts over chores and interpersonal relationships in Hong Kong than in Shenzhen and more conflicts over schoolwork in Shenzhen than in Hong Kong, particularly among 7th and 12th graders. As expected, adolescents primarily justified conflicts, particularly conflicts over choice of activities and homework, by appealing to personal jurisdiction, and across contexts, personal reasoning increased with age. Conflicts were resolved primarily by giving in to parents, although adolescents desired more autonomy in decision making than they reported having. Although adolescent–parent conflict among Chinese youth appears to reflect the development of adolescent autonomy, culturally specific processes influence its expression.

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