Change Over Time in Parent-‐Adolescent Conﬂict: Psychological Aggression as an Emerging Conﬂict Tac;c Chase J. Boyer
San Francisco State University Abstract
Research Question and hypotheses
Does the trajectory of parent-child conflict across adolescence differ based on
family structure, gender of child, and/or ethnicity?
•  H1: Conflict will increase more over time among stepfamilies than intact families.
•  H2: Adolescents will report more conflict over time with mothers than with fathers.
Participants & Procedure
•  Participants were 392 adolescents and their parents who were in intact or
stepfather families of Mexican-American (N = 193) and European-American (N =
199) ancestry drawn from the Parents and Youth Study (http://pays.sfsu.edu/).
•  Using a cohort sequential design, data were collected in four cohorts across
three time points. Data were collected when adolescents were in 7th grade, 8th or
9th grade, and 10th grade.
•  During Time 1 and Time 3, data were collected using an in-person interview,
however, a phone interview was employed at Time 2.
Measures
Intact-‐Families European-‐American Males 5.000 Intact-‐Families European-‐American Females 4.800 4.600 Es;mated Marginal Means Introduction
•  Parent-adolescent conflict rises in early adolescence, peaks in middle
adolescence, and begins to decrease in late adolescence (Laursen, Coy, &
Collins, 1998). However, it is unclear whether this pattern is shared by all
adolescents.
•  Despite implications for adolescent maladjustment, psychological aggression
(i.e., shouting, name calling) is a common conflict tactic employed by parents in
the United States (Strauss, 2003). In a nationally representative sample of
families, 88.6% reported using psychological aggression to resolve a parentchild conflict; shouting, yelling, or screaming emerged as the most common
conflict tactic.
•  Conflict between adolescents and their mothers tends to higher in families with
a stepfather present compared to families with co-resident biological parents
(Schlomer, Ellis, & Garber, 2010).
•  Family conflict can occur across all family types and ethnicities, however, the
meaning and form of conflict may depend on culturally-grounded family
socialization practices (Yasui & Dishion, 2007). One study found that MexicanAmerican parents employed more harsh parental control but this behavior
appeared to serve as a protective factor against acculturative stress.
Figures
Intact-‐Families Mexican-‐American Males 4.400 4.200 Intact-‐Families Mexican-‐American Females 4.000 3.800 3.600 Step-‐Families European-‐American Males 3.400 3.200 Step-‐Families European-‐American Females 3.000 2.800 Step-‐Families Mexican-‐American Males 2.600 2.400 2.200 2.000 1 2 3 Step-‐Families Mexican-‐American Females Wave Figure 1a. Adolescent’s reports of shouting, yelling, screaming, swearing, or cursing from
their mother over time. Highlighted lines indicate a significant 4-way interaction for
frequency of shouting by mothers F (2, 600) = 8.042, p = .016, ηp2 = .014.
3.200 3.000 Es;mated Marginal Means In the current study, we examined change over time in parent-adolescent conflict
and explored differences by gender, family structure, and ethnicity. The 293
adolescents in the study reported the frequency of psychological aggressive
conflict tactics from mothers and fathers/stepfathers across 3 waves from 7th-10th
grade. Average adolescent conflict with mothers started higher and ended higher
than conflict with fathers/stepfathers, but conflict with adolescents increased over
time for both parents. Mexican-American females from stepfamilies reported the
most increase over time in conflict with their mothers across both mother
behaviors. While these descriptive results do not explain the processes driving
destructive parent-adolescent conflict among families, family processes among
racially/ethnically diverse stepfamilies merit further investigated.
Jeffrey T. Cookston
San Francisco State University 2.800 2.600 2.400 2.200 2.000 1.800 1.600 1.400 1 2 3 Intact-‐Families European-‐American Males Intact-‐Families European-‐American Females Intact-‐Families Mexican-‐American Males Intact-‐Families Mexican-‐American Females Step-‐Families European-‐American Males Step-‐Families European-‐American Females Step-‐Families Mexican-‐American Males Step-‐Families Mexican-‐American Females Wave Figure 1b.Adolescent’s reports of name-calling and threats their mothers across time.
Highlighted lines indicate a significant 4-way interaction for frequency of shouting by
mothers F (1.98, 593.87) = 7.440, p = .009, ηp2 = .016.
Parent-Adolescent Conflict. Two items from the Parent-Child Conflict Tactics
Scale (CTSPC; Strauss et al., 1998) were used to assess the frequency of
adolescent-reported psychological aggression employed by parents during
conflicts with adolescents. Specifically, we measured two types of psychological
aggression, shouting at the child or calling the child names. Items were, “In the
past year, how often did shout at, yell at, scream at, swear at, or curse at your
child?” and “In the past year, how often did you call (child) dumb or lazy or some
other name like that, or say you would send him/her away or kick him/her out of
the house?”. Both items were ranked on a scale of 1 (never in the past year) to 7
(more than 20 times in the past year). Measured as an effects model, the two
items were intended to stand alone to indicate a frequency of behavior. The two
items were constructed by collapsing the five items from the Psychological
Aggression subscale of the CTSPC.
Results & Discussion
•  Using repeated measures model ANOVAs, we measured each parentadolescent psychological aggression item individually across all 3 waves as
the within-subject factor. We also measured family structure (i.e., step or
intact), child gender, and ethnicity (i.e., European- or Mexican-American) as
between-subject factors in each model.
•  Adolescent reports demonstrated a significant main effect for time on the
frequency of shouting, yelling, screaming, swearing, or cursing directed at
them by fathers/stepfathers F (2, 576) = 14.557, p < .001, ηp2 = .048, and
mothers F (2, 600) = 29.103, p < .001, ηp2 = .088 such that this behavior
increased linearly for mothers and fathers/stepfathers. Similarly,
adolescents reported a main effect or time on the frequency of parentadolescent name-calling and threats both from mothers, F (1.98, 593.87)
= 20.462, p < .001, ηp2 = .064, and fathers/stepfathers, F (2, 576) =
22.275, p < .001, ηp2 = .072.
•  Mexican-American females from stepfamilies emerged as experiencing
the greatest increase in mother-adolescent conflict over time, whereas
Mexican-American females from intact families experienced the least
amount of change over time in mother-adolescent conflict (See Figures
1A and 1B).
•  Although our results do not explain the family processes that contribute to
different levels of parent-adolescent conflict among stepfamilies and
Mexican-American families, these results do suggest psychological
aggression is a conflict tactic frequently used by European- and MexicanAmerican parents from both step- and intact families.
•  Future investigations would benefit from measuring changes in
adolescent adjustment over time concurrently with changes in parentadolescent conflict.
Acknowledgement
We are grateful to the families who participated in these projects and also to the many members of the Parents and Youth
Study for the data collection and entry of these data which made this work possible. To learn more about our lab visit
http://bss.sfsu.edu/devpsych/fair/.