Understanding Family Contexts of Adolescent Coping

Abstract

Many researchers, including John Hill, have studied parental influences on adolescent development. This sty investigated one aspect of parental influence, ego development, and its relation to adolescent coping. Two different groups of early adolescents were studied, one group from a public high school and the other current inpatients at a psychiatric hospital. This study found that when independently assessed, parental ego development was related to numerous adolescent coping strategies. Findings were stronger for maternal ego development; and stronger still for maternal ego development within the high school sample. Possible explanations for these new findings about the interplay between family context and an important aspect of adolescent functioning are discussed, together with planned future longitudinal investigations that may shed more light on these results.