Psychosocial adjustment and family relationships: A typology of Italian families with a late adolescent

The importance of family relationships in human development and adjustment has always been recognized in psychological studies. The present study aims to construct a typology of families with a late adolescent and to analyze the family relationships present in each type. The typology, constructed us ing family satisfaction-a global index of family functioning-as the discrim inate variable, rook into account eight types. This study is focused on the two extreme types of the typology: "Families with adequate functioning or satisfied families" and "Families with inadequate functioning or dissatisfi ed families." These two types of families were compared according to variab les such as: (a) parent-child communication and its topics and (b) the fami ly's decision-making process on topics related to the adolescent and his/he r future orientation. All subjects completed a questionnaire composed of di fferent scales. The results show substantial differences in the two family types regarding both family functioning and the role played by mothers and fathers. Satisfied families give evidence of a better communication process than the dissatisfied ones, greater sharing between parents and adolescent s and, finally a decision-making process based mostly on sharing and suppor t. Moreover; in satisfied families the father has the role of social mediat or: In this way, he succeeds in part in restoring equilibrium to the relati onal imbalance in favor of mothers so typical of Italian families.