Adolescent Romantic Relationships

Simon, Valerie

Abstract

The goal of the proposed research is to investigate the associations between parents' marital functioning and romantic relationship functioning of their adolescent children. Parents' marital behavior has been linked to child psychopathology and, more recently, to children's peer relationships. However, less is known about how particular dimensions of marriage influence adolescents' peer relationships, particularly their romantic relationships. Given the salience of romantic relationships in adolescents' lives and the importance of these relationships to psychological adjustment throughout adulthood, more research is needed to better understand how adolescents come to approach and behave in their romantic relationships. The proposed research will examine the associations between parents' marriage and adolescents' romantic relationships along four dimensions: conflict, communication, support, and satisfaction. Questionnaire data will be obtained from 160 parent couples and 160 high school seniors about these dimensions of their romantic relationships. Adolescents also complete questionnaires about their perceptions of their parents' marriage. Observational data of the four dimensions will also be obtained by videotaping a subset of 60 parent and 60 adolescent romantic couples during a series of interactions. Adolescent data are being collected as part of a larger NIMH-funded study of adolescent romantic relationship. The current project is an addendum to that grant and will involve collecting questionnaire data from 160 parent couples and observational data from a subset of 60 parent couples. Parents' marital functioning in the four relationship dimensions is predicted to be associated with corresponding dimensions of adolescents' romantic relationships. Yet, based on previous research, adolescents' perceptions of their parents' marital behavior are also predicted to mediate at least some of these associations. The identification of links between parents' marriage and adolescent children's romantic relationship functioning is important for understanding how adolescents come to approach and behave in their romantic relationships. Established links between relationship functioning and mental health also render these findings important for the prevention and treatment of relationship disturbances and related psychopathology.