Doctor of Philosophy / Department of School of Family Studies and Human Services / Jared R. Anderson / This study prospectively examined how parent-adolescent relationships influence romantic relationship quality of offspring, utilizing the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health (ADD Health, n = 3,946). Further, this study investigated whether self-esteem and depression symptoms mediated these relationships, and if gender was a significant moderator. Adolescent girls who perceived their relationships with their mothers and fathers to be strong were more likely to have better quality romantic relationships as young adults. This relationship was found to be direct and indirect, through the effect of self-esteem. Adolescent boys who perceived their relationship with their father to be strong and whose mothers were more knowledgeable about them were less likely to experience depression symptoms as young adults, and in turn, to have better quality romantic relationships. Adolescent boys whose mothers perceived to have a strong relationship with them had higher self-esteem as young adults. Finally, there were significant differences between boys and girls in that the association between mother knowledge and depression symptoms was stronger for boys. Results support the stability of parent-adolescent relationships in influencing future relationships and highlight the importance of parent-adolescent relationships in predicting psychological wellbeing and romantic relationship quality.

This longitudinal study investigates whether the timing of sexual debut (early, on-time, or late, compared to one’s peers) is associated with young adult romantic relationship quality (i.e., overt and relational victimization, relational aggression, dating worries, and positive dating experiences) either directly or indirectly by moderating the relationship between trajectories of individual factors (internalizing symptoms, externalizing symptoms, and alcohol use) young adult romantic relationship quality. Participants were from a large, six-wave longitudinal study (N = 662, 48% males, M age at T1 = 15.5 years, SD = 1.9 years). I use multi-step regression models to estimate how sexual debut group moderates the association between individual factors and young adult romantic relationship experiences by estimating slopes and intercepts for individual factors and creating interaction terms to test the moderating effect of timing of sexual debut on the slopes and intercepts of individual factors. Gender differences are also investigated. Results indicate that early sexual debut is associated with higher baseline levels of individual factors and directly predicts negative relationship experiences in young adulthood. Early sexual debut moderates the relationship between baseline internalizing symptoms and negative dating experiences and dating worries in young adulthood. Findings also show that early sexual debut moderates the relationship between steeper increases in externalizing symptoms and negative dating experiences and dating worries. The results provide a better understanding of the longitudinal impacts of adolescent experiences on young adult relationship outcomes. / Graduate

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