Adolescents in Postdivorce and Always-Married Families: Self-Esteem and Perceptions of Fathers' Interest

Abstract

Most early studies of the effects of divorce on children and adolescents were framed by a deficit-model assumption that nonnuclear family forms produce undesirable outcomes for children (Marotz-Baden, Adams, Bueche, Munro, Munro, 1979). Studies were based on a social-address model of research (Bronfenbrenner & Crouter, 1983) in which assessments of children living at the social of broken home were made with the assumption that any way in which those children were not doing well was a result of their parents' divorce. In contrast, in recent years, family processes have begun to supplant family address as the focal point of studies of divorce and youth (e.g., Buchanan, Maccoby, & Dornbusch, 1992). The next step in this line of study is to explore (Steinberg, Mounts, Lamborn, & Dombusch, 1991, p. 20), or ways in which family processes vary as a function of the context in which they occur. Such research would provide evidence regarding what Bronfenbrenner and Crouter (1983) have termed person-process-context relationships in development. In the present study, we test a process-by-context model by asking whether fathers' interest in their adolescents (a family process) is differentially related to adolescent self-esteem in two different contexts: two-parent, always-married families versus postdivorce, mother-headed families. A relationship between paternal interest and adolescent self-esteem seems likely given that self-esteem, according to the symbolic interactionism viewpoint (Cooley, 1902; Mead, 1934), is a product of parents' appraisals of their adolescent, as reflected in the complexion of daily parent-child interactions (see Rosenberg, 1979). Adolescents' perceptions of parental support, interest, and participation in their lives, which consistently have been found to correlate with adolescent self-esteem (Bachman, 1970; Coopersmith, 1967; Rosenberg, 1965; Thomas, Gecas, Weigert, & Rooney, 1974), no doubt reflect a positive parental appraisal in the adolescent's mind. From this perspective, it is adolescents' perceptions of parents' attitudes, rather than parents' actual attitudes, that constitute the critical influence on self-esteem (Rosenberg, 1979). In that case, would we expect an impact on adolescent self-esteem when parents divorce? In the months and years following a divorce, it is common for nonresidential fathers' involvement with their children to wane (e.g., Furstenberg, Spanier, & Rothschild, 1982). If adolescents' perceptions of parents' attitudes exert an influence on self-esteem, then a father's apparent loss of interest following divorce might be expected to do injury to adolescent self-esteem. Then again, the relationship between adolescent self-esteem and postdivorce paternal interest may vary over the course of adolescence. During the adolescent years, peers progressively displace parents as the significant others with the greatest impact on self-esteem (Harter, 1990). In addition, when parents have divorced, older adolescents' adult-like cognitive abilities allow them to understand many divorce-related realities (Kalter, 1990) and may lessen the impact of such factors as nonresidential parents' seeming disinterest, when it occurs. In fact, where postdivorce well-being is concerned, adolescents' cognitive abilities are particularly pertinent, for the process by which children and adolescents make sense of divorce-related experiences includes making causal about outcomes that are largely negative (Kurdek, 1986). Either, internal or external factors can be used to explain outcomes that one might have influenced, such as a father's degree of interest in oneself. If cause is attributed to internal factors, or one's personal characteristics, self-esteem may suffer (Abramson, Seligman, & Teasdale, 1978). In such circumstances, individuals may guard their self-esteem by making defensive attributions (Shaver, 1970, p. …