| This study investigated the effects of marital power dynamics on adolescent children's emotional adjustment. The present study expands the definition of power used in previous studies to include all three domains of power as defined by Cromwell and Olson (I975): power bases, power processes, and power outcomes. Power bases included measures of income, education, job prestige and gender role attitudes; power processes included measures of power-sharing, power-imbalanced, and coercive-hostile influence strategies; power outcomes included measures of decision-making power and division of labor.; The sample consisted of 160 college students (ages 17--21), who were from predominantly upper middle-class European-American and Asian-American families. Participants completed the following self-report questionnaires about their parents and themselves: Child's Perception of Marital Power Questionnaire (designed for present study); Attitudes Toward Women Scale; Center for Epidemiological Studies - Depression Scale; Strain Questionnaire; and Rosenberg Self-Esteem Inventory. Analyses of variance were conducted to explore the main effects of and interactions between child gender and marital power variables on adolescent depression, anxiety and self-esteem.; Parents' use of power-sharing influence strategies emerged as the most important predictor of positive outcomes for both boys and girls. Further, when parents used violent influence strategies, girls evidenced more anxiety both when compared to boys from these same families and when compared to boys and girls in non-violent families. Girls had the best adjustment (both when compared to other girls and also to boys) when mothers had more education, when both parents held egalitarian attitudes toward women, and when parents had a more equitable distribution of household labor and childcare. Both boys and girls evidenced more anxiety when the opposite-sex parent had more decision-making power.; The present study demonstrates that multiple domains of power, beyond the traditionally studied measures of decision-making power, were useful in predicting adolescent outcome. Parents' education, gender role attitudes, influence strategies, decision-making power and division of labor were all important predictors of adolescent emotional adjustment. Results indicate that marital power sharing, an aspect of healthy marital functioning, has a beneficial impact on children. |
