Feelings in the Family: Interparental Conflict, Anger, and Expressiveness in Families With Older Adolescents

Abstract

This study explored the relations between aspects of family functioning (parent-child relationship, family and self-expressiveness, and interparental conflict) and young adults' patterns of anger expression. Contrary to the hypothesis that family and self-expressiveness would be related to interparental conflict, the results suggested that young adults'retrospective reports of interparental conflict were related only to family expressiveness. Self-expressiveness, however, appeared to be associated more with the socialization of emotional expression within a family than with how parents handled angry emotions between themselves. As hypothesized, negative selfexpressiveness was associated with negative family expressiveness. Positive self-expressiveness, however, was related to positive and negative family expressiveness. Interparental conflict was related to the experience and expression of anger, especially with violent marital conflicts. The findings supported the hypothesis that interparental conflict would be negatively related to perceptions of the parent-child relationship and parental emotional availability. The findings better illustrate the relationship between one's family environment and various aspects of functioning in young adulthood. Individual and family therapy implications are discussed.

Adolescent Pathways to Adult Smoking: Ethnic Identity, Peer Substance Use, and Antisocial Behavior

“…Our developmental model showed that an earlier conflictual parent–child relationship increased the likelihood of later adult antisocial behavior (eg, delinquency). This finding is consistent with FIT, 4 and with research on community samples, including racial and ethnic minority samples 6,50 . In accordance with FIT, aspects of a weak parent–child bond, including greater parent–child conflict, may loosen the ties to conventional authority that the parents represent, and predispose the adolescent toward rebelliousness and delinquent behavior 4 .…”

“…However, in a cross‐sectional study with a predominantly White sample, Forehand, Biggar, and Kotchick 5 found that family risk factors, including mother–adolescent relationship problems, were associated with externalizing behaviors, such as criminal behaviors, in adults. Moreover, studies have shown that potential stressors within the family, such as a conflictual relationship with parents and authoritarian methods of parental control, have been associated with difficulties in psychosocial adjustment and behavioral problems among adolescents 6,7 . There is a compelling need to identify earlier family factors that are associated with later antisocial behavior and tobacco use in African‐American and Puerto Rican adults in their mid‐twenties.…”

Pathways to Smoking Cessation Among African American and Puerto Rican Young Adults

“…This finding is consistent with family interactional theory 7 and with research on community samples, including racial and ethnic minority youth. 39,40 In accordance with family interactional theory, aspects of a strong parent-offspring bond, including less parent-offspring conflict, strengthen the ties to conventional authority that the parents represent and incline adolescents toward the avoidance of rebellious and deviant behavior and, ultimately, substance use. 7 Numerous investigators have indicated that a lack of behavioral control during adolescence and young adulthood, including delinquent, risk-taking, and rebellious behavior, predict substance use in adulthood.…”

Anger in families

“…Individuals' elicitation of anger within the family is also likely; family quarreling with adolescents appears to be linked to their own unique attributes (Eichelsheim et al, 2011), and adolescents' psychopathology appears to be associated with their consistent elicitations of angry and unfriendly responses from parents (Cook, Kenny, & Goldstein, 1991). Anger has also been increasingly understood as created within relationships as well as something individuals bring to their relationships (e.g., Campos et al, 1994;Clark & Phares, 2004;Eisenkraft & Elfenbein, 2010;Papp, Kouros, & Cummings, 2010). In fact, Mesquita (2010) argues that emotions, including anger, should be viewed entirely as relationship acts; the family provides an ideal organizational system in which to consider these relationship effects.…”