Although most individuals pass through adolescence without excessively high levels of "storm and stress," many do experience difficulty. Why? Is there something unique about this developmental period that puts adolescents at risk for difficulty? This article focuses on this question and advances the hypothesis that some of the negative psychological changes associated with adolescent development result from a mismatch between the needs of developing adolescents and the opportunities afforded them by their social environments. It provides examples of how this mismatch develops in the school and in the home and how it is linked to negative age-related changes in early adolescents' motivation and self-perceptions. Ways in which more developmentally appropriate social environments can be created are discussed.

This study examined adolescents' feelings of being caught between parents to see whether this construct helps to explain (1) variability in their postdivorce adjustment and (2) associations between family/child characteristics and adolescent adjustment. Adolescents 10 to 18 years old (N = 522) were interviewed by telephone 4 1/2 years after their parents' separation. Feeling caught between parents was related to high parental conflict and hostility and low parental cooperation. Being close to both parents was associated with low feelings of being caught. The relation between time spent with each parent and feeling caught depended on the coparenting relationship. Adolescents in dual residence were especially likely to feel caught when parents were in high conflict, and especially unlikely to feel caught when parents cooperated. Feeling caught was related to poor adjustment outcomes. Parental conflict was only related to adjustment outcomes indirectly, through adolescents' feelings of being caught.

The literatures on hormone changes at adolescence, hormonal influences on moods and behavior in nonhuman animals and adult humans, and mood and behavioral changes at adolescence and the small but burgeoning literature on hormonal influences at adolescence are examined. The focus is on moods and behaviors often identified as typically adolescent (e.g., mood lability, mood intensity, irritability, conflict with parents) and the primary hormones of puberty (i.e., the adrenal androgens, gonadotropins, and sex steroids). Through an integration of these literatures evidence is assessed for specific hormone-mood and hormone-behavior associations, as well as for more general types of hormone-outcome relations that transcend specific hormones or outcomes. Non-biological factors that appear to be important in moderating the role of hormones in adolescent moods and behavior are identified. Implications for the design of future studies in this area are detailed.

To elucidate the benefits ascribed to parental monitoring, the authors examined links between parental knowledge and methods of obtaining knowledge about adolescents' activities, and links between these constructs and adolescent adjustment. The roles of parent gender, adolescent gender, and family earner status in these associations were also studied. Participants were 95 adolescents (ages 10 to 17 years, 60% male and 40% female) and their parents. Mothers knew more about adolescents' activities than did fathers and were more likely than fathers to gain information by active supervision or voluntary disclosure from the adolescent. Fathers, more than mothers, received information via spouses. Active methods of supervision predicted more knowledge among fathers and mothers from dual-earner families but not among mothers from single-earner families. More maternal knowledge predicted lower adolescent deviance. No method of gaining knowledge predicted adjustment directly.

Study 1 was a 3-year longitudinal study of divorcing families (N = 1,124 families) that focused on custodial arrangements and interparental communication and conflict. Study 2 was a follow-up study of the adolescent children from the Study 1 families that focused on adolescents' relationships with resident and nonresident parents, on processes in each parental household, and on adolescents' adjustment in different custodial arrangements. Parental roles differed substantially after divorce, with mothers carrying the primary responsibility for residential care and economic support. Most fathers remained substantially involved in their children's lives over the duration of the studies. Adolescents were doing at least as well in joint physical custody as when living primarily with 1 parent. The possible costs and benefits of maintaining contact with nonresident parents are discussed.Following the "no-fault divorce" revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, new issues arose concerning the custody of children. Custody statutes in most states were revised, one aim of the revisions being to make the divorce laws gender neutral. Some of the revised laws explicitly stated that no automatic preference should be shown either to the father or the mother when awarding custody. Furthermore, children's access to both parents was to be encouraged and protected. In California, a revised statute, which came into effect in 1980, explicitly legitimized joint physical custody, and in cases where one parent was awarded custody, it pro-