Family System Characteristics, Parental Behaviors, and Adolescent Family Life Satisfaction

Abstract

FAMILY SYSTEM CHARACTERISTICS, PARENTAL BEHAVIORS AND ADOLESCENT FAMILY LIFE SATISFACTION* Carolyn S. Henry** By the time families reach the adolescent phase of the family life cycle, they typically have faced a variety of predictable and unpredictable stressor events that required some adaptation of the family system (McCubbin & McCubbin, 1989). Common stressors for families with adolescents include maintaining a balance between separation and connectedness for adolescents (Cooper, Grotevant, & Condon, 1984; Youniss & Smollar, 1985), the reexamination of parental career and marital issues (Fischer & Standridge-Brown, 1989), and caring for aging grandparents (Carter & McGoldrick, 1988). Beyond these normative stressors, families may face unpredictable stress, such as the illness of a family member or a financial crisis (Figley, 1983). According to family stress theory, when stressors occur, their impact on families and family members varies according to the circumstances and perceptions of the situation (Hill, 1949). Further, the resources of families serve as critical factors related to the adaptation of families and their members (Hill, 1949). Family resources encompass a wide array of social and psychological assets that hold the potential to buffer the difficulties arising from stressors and include the psychological strengths of individual family members, social support systems, and interactions among family members (McCubbin & McCubbin, 1989). After family attempts to resolve difficulties emerging from stressors, the level of family adaptation can be examined by considering the well-being of either the overall family system or individual family members, including adolescents (McCubbin & Patterson, 1983). Previous scholarship regarding the relationship between internal family resources and adolescent adaptation is limited by the tendency to focus upon either overall family system characteristics (e.g., bonding, flexibility, patterns of stability) or parenting behaviors (e.g., support, control) that occur in the context of parent-adolescent dyads, or subsystems. Although theorists and clinicians often emphasize the importance of both overall family system characteristics and parent-adolescent subsystems to adolescent adaptation, empirical investigations using systems approaches (including family stress theory) tend to focus upon qualities of the overall family system, with little consideration of parent-adolescent subsystems. In contrast, other research on adolescent well-being focuses upon parenting behaviors that occur in specific parent-adolescent dyads, with minimal consideration of the overall family system (for a review, see Peterson & Leigh, 1990). More comprehensive models are needed to explore how family resources within both the overall family system and parent-adolescent dyads relate to adolescent adaptation (Hauser et al., 1991; Peterson & Hann, in press). Using such models, interventions can be developed and utilized that seek to enhance adolescent well-being through strengthening family resources within the overall family system and parent-adolescent subsystems. Based upon these ideas, the purpose of this study was to examine demographic variables, overall family system characteristics, and parenting behaviors as predictors of adolescent family life satisfaction, a form of adolescent adaptation. ADOLESCENT FAMILY LIFE SATISFACTION Previous research documents the importance of satisfaction with aspects of family life (i.e., marital satisfaction, Glenn, 1990; parental satisfaction, Goetting, 1986; and overall family life satisfaction, Olson et al., 1983) as indicators of quality of life (Olson et al., 1983) and adaptation (McCubbin, Thompson, Pirner, & McCubbin, 1988). Although investigations of family life satisfaction typically focus on adults, a few studies have examined adolescent family life satisfaction. Adolescent family life satisfaction is defined as the extent to which adolescents perceive their families in a positive manner (Henry, Ostrander, & Lovelace, 1992). …