Perceived family climate, psychological adjustment, and peer relationship of black adolescents: A function of parental marital status or perceived family conflict?

Abstract

This study examined two contrasting views of divorce and its effect on the adjustment of children. The physical wholeness position maintains that divorce itself is the salient variable that adversely affects children via the physical dissolution of the family; while the psychological wholeness position maintains that conflict is the critical variable which influences adjustment and does so regardless of parental marital status. Results of analyses on a sample of black working lower class adolescents failed to support the physical wholeness position; adolescents' age at the time of parental divorce, gender, and parental marital status were not significantly related to perception of family climate, psychological adjustment, grade point average, or peer relationships. However, results did provide strong support for the psychological wholeness position since adolescents' perception of family climate, psychological adjustment, and peer relationships were all significantly related to level of perceived conflict in the family. Conceptualizing divorce as a crisis situation rather than as a uniformly and universally negative event appears more reasonable since adolescents in our sample adapted to, and coped with, divorce. Use of conflict identification and resolution interventions to reduce family conflict may prevent future problems in child development.