Translating Parenting Research into Clinical Interventions for Families of Adolescents

Abstract

The contributions of parenting to the adolescent's psychosocial development have become the focus of increased attention by researchers and clinicians alike. Although parents face the difficult challenge of providing increasing levels of autonomy to the maturing adolescent while peers become more central to the adolescent's life, parents continue to exert significant influence throughout this developmental stage. Significant progress in this research specialty has been highlighted by researchers, assisting in the specification of developmentally sensitive interventions for problem adolescents. We review selective, clinically relevant research on parenting during the adolescent transition in order to demonstrate how interventions can be informed by basic developmental research. The clinical implications of parenting within the adolescent developmental research are emphasized throughout the review. A particular intervention module, a parental reconnection intervention, which has been used in the context of a family-based intervention, Multidimensional Family Therapy is described as a prototype of an empirically based treatment component.