Family System Dynamics, Peer Relationships, and Adolescents' Psychological Adjustment

Abstract

The patterns of differentiation within the marital, parental, and parent/child relationships and the level of support experienced within peer relationships are examined as predictors of reported levels of anxiety and depression in a sample of late adolescents. One of the more striking results is the finding that peer support and system dynamics, particularly the level of differentiation reported in the marital subsystem, significantly covaried with reported levels of depression. With respect to the analyses on reported levels of anxiety, only the differentiation level found within the parental subsystem and within the mother/child reciprocal relationship emerged as statistically significant predictors. Finally, adolescent participation in a cross-generational coalition was associated with higher reported levels of anxiety and depression. These results are presented in conjunction with clinical implications that emphasize the need for clinicians to attend to broader system dynamics, not only parent/child dynamics, when treating adolescents. Family therapists are often interested in the links between family interactional dynamics and individual members' functioning and adjustment. For adolescents and young adults, problems such as failed individuation efforts, identity issues, substance abuse, eating disorders, running away from home, problems with intimacy and making commitments have all been assumed to be related to problematic interactions in the family of origin (Bagarozzi & Anderson, 1989; Bowen, 1978; Haley, 1980; Stanton & Todd, 1982; Stierlin, 1981). It has been further assumed that younger members exposed to dysfunctional family interactions carry unresolved conflicts with them even after they physically separate from the family and are likely to reenact disturbed interactional patterns in other significant relationships. Thus, disturbed interactions in the family of origin are replicated in succeeding generations of the family system and implicated in the adjustment problems of each generation's younger members (Bagarozzi & Anderson, 1989; Bowen, 1978).

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