Scholars of adolescence have identified parents and peers as two important contexts of development. This dissertation examines an understudied linkage between these two contexts: parents' management of adolescents' friendships. A conceptual model for thinking about parents' management of adolescents' peer relationships was developed and examined as part of the study. Specifically, four peer management behaviors were examined: communicating preferences, communicating disapproval, supporting friendships, and information-seeking. The nature of parents' beliefs about their adolescents' friends (specifically, parents' perceived efficacy in managing their adolescents' friends and parents' concerns about their adolescents' friendships) was also explored. To further evaluate linkages suggested by the conceptual model, connections between parents' beliefs about adolescents' peers and their peer management behaviors were investigated. These aspects of managing adolescents' friendships were then examined for linkages, suggested by the conceptual model, to adolescents' reported friendships (i.e., the deviant and prosocial orientations of their friends) and psychosocial adjustment (i.e., their reported engagement in school and in problem behaviors).
The participants for the study were 452 adolescents and 269 parents (161 mothers and 108 fathers). Data were collected from the adolescents at two time points, in the spring of 1997 and the spring of 1998, resulting in longitudinal information for 170 adolescents. Approximately six months after the first data collection for adolescents, questionnaire packages were sent home for parents' participation.
The study results suggest that parents use the four management behaviors described, albeit relatively infrequently. Additionally, the more parents engaged in one peer management behavior, the more they engaged in the other peer management behaviors. Parents also felt relatively efficacious in managing their adolescents' friendships and were generally unconcerned about their adolescents' friendships. In general, mothers and fathers held similar beliefs about adolescents' friendships, and were similar in their management of their adolescents' friendships.
When the relationships between parents' beliefs about peers and management behaviors to adolescents' friendships and psychosocial adjustment were examined, some interesting linkages were revealed. For example, mothers and fathers reported being more concerned about their adolescents' friendships when their adolescents were engaged in more problem behaviors. When relationships to parents' peer management behaviors were examined, adolescents' problem behaviors and deviant friends emerged as significant predictors of parents' management behaviors, showing relationships to mothers' and fathers' communicating disapproval and information-seeking, as well as to fathers' supporting friendships. For mothers, their concerns also emerged as a significant predictor of their peer management behaviors, showing relationships with supporting friendships and information-seeking. For fathers, feeling efficacious in managing adolescents' friendships was more consistently related to their peer management behaviors than were their concerns about adolescents' friendships.
Finally, parents' concerns about adolescents' friends, communicating disapproval and information-seeking were examined for relationships to change in adolescents' deviant friendships and psychosocial adjustment. These analyses revealed that when adolescents' school engagement increased, fathers communicated disapproval more and when adolescents' school engagement decreased, fathers sought information about their adolescents' friends more often.
The results of this study provide insight into parents' management of adolescents' friendships and suggest avenues for further research. These avenues and other unexplored linkages suggested by the conceptual model are the substantive focus of the discussion. / Graduate
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uvic.ca/oai:dspace.library.uvic.ca:1828/9142 |
| Date | 16 March 2018 |
| Creators | Tilton-Weaver, Lauree Coleen |
| Contributors | Galambos, Nancy L. |
| Source Sets | University of Victoria |
| Language | English, English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | Available to the World Wide Web |
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