CONFLICT BETWEEN PARENTS AND ADOLESCENTS - VARIATION BY FAMILY CONSTITUTION

Conflicts between parents and adolescents were explored from the viewp oint of 13- and 15-year-old children (N = 397). There was support for Steinberg's (1989) distancing hypothesis: older children reported more aggression, more frustration and lower intimacy outcomes. There was a lso support for the hypothesis that the more complex position of adole scent girls (valuing both closeness and autonomy) would result in high er levels of frustration, whereas boys would be more clearly confronta tional-producing relatively more escalation. Overall, mothers were exp erienced as more compromising and as fostering greater intimacy in com parison to fathers. There were differences between family types: those mothers living with a partner were reported as more aggressive than m others from non-divorcing families, and adolescents living with mother alone reported more frustration and escalation outcomes. In respect o f fathers, non-residential fathers and daughters experienced less aggr ession, lower escalation outcomes and sustained higher levels of compr omise in comparison to fathers in non-divorcing families. Boys without their father resident reported the lowest levels of compromise with b oth mothers and fathers-consistent with others' research suggesting th at boys' accommodation to parental separation is more problematic. Fin ally, effects of parental age were explored.