Parent-adolescent Relationship And Friendship During Adolescence: Association With Depression And Loneliness

Family and peer are the necessary micro-systems that play important roles in adolescents'psychological social adjustment and development. Family relationships, events, and interactions, as well as the turbulence and quality of peer relationships, have all been linked to changes in internalizing symptoms in adolescence, especially in early to mid-adolescence. However, there is little information available regarding the combining effect of parent-adolescent relationships and friendships on adolescent emotional health, even though the researches about parent-adolescent relationships and friendships increasing. And most of these studies were conducted with adolescents in Western cultures. Furthermore, research on parent-child relationships in adolescence suggests that mothers and fathers have unique and different relationships with children and adolescents. Based on the review, this study examined the characteristics of adolescent-mother relationships, adolescent-father relationships and friendships, and the effect of parent-adolescent relationships and friendships, as well as the effect of adolescents'relationships with mothers and fathers on depression and loneliness.A peer nomination measure of reciprocal friends and self-report measures of parent-adolescent relationships, friendships, depression and loneliness were investigated on 480 adolescents from grade 5,7and 10. Conclusions drawn in this thesis are as follows:1. Adolescents reported more maternal support than paternal support, and more conflict with mothers than with fathers. With the age increasing, all maternal, paternal support and friends'conflict decreased, whereas conflict with either parent increased. But adolescents in grade 10 had the most parental conflict, and friends'conflict was the least in grade 7. Girls perceived more support from friends than boys did.2. In grade 5, parental support and conflict predicted loneliness and depression significantly, and gender moderated the connection between parental support and depression:only for girls. In grade 7, the influence of friends'support increased, and both loneliness and depression were connected with friends'support negatively. Whereas more friends'and parental conflict increased the dangers of depression, which were moderated by gender:only for boys. Also, maternal support predicted loneliness only for boys. In grade 10, the influence of paternal support increased, and both loneliness and depression were connected with paternal support negatively. Compared with grade 7, the effect of friends'support decreased, but gender moderated the connection between friends'support and depression:only for girls.3. In grade 5, parental support moderated the relation between friends'conflict and loneliness and depression. In grade 7, parental support moderated the relation between friends'support and loneliness and depression:for adolescents with good parental support, friends'support predicted loneliness more significantly, and only when adolescents had more parental support, friends'support predicted depression significantly. In grade 10, parent-adolescent conflict moderated the relation between friends'support and loneliness:only when adolescents with normal parent-adolescent relationship, good friendship promoted better adolescent emotional adjustment.4. Positive paternal support only moderated the association of negative adolescent-mother conflict with depression and loneliness among girls at grade 7. For those girls with low conflict with mothers, the level of paternal support was a significant predictor of depression, whereas for those with high conflict with mothers, having a supportive father didn't buffer the girls'depression. Only for those having a supportive father, low conflict with mothers predicted little loneliness.