Same family, divergent realities: How triangulation preserves parents’ illusory harmony while adolescents navigate interparental conflicts.

Abstract

Triangulation is a process in which a child is drawn into conflict between two parents, and is linked to adolescent psychological maladjustment. Although harmful, families may engage in triangulation due to its promotion of diverging realities in which youth become more attuned to interparental conflict (IPC), yet parents are distracted from tension within their interparental relationship. Although central to theoretical depictions of triangulation and carrying robust implications for family science and prevention, the phenomenon of diverging realities in triangulating families has received inadequate empirical evaluation. This study utilized data collected from 150 families in which 1 parent and 1 adolescent completed baseline surveys and 21 daily diary questionnaires on triangulation, IPC, and family cohesion. Multilevel models were applied, nesting days within families, to evaluate within-family associations between triangulation and divergent perspectives of family functioning. Results from multilevel models indicated that on days when adolescents experienced elevated triangulation, discrepancies between adolescent and parent reports of IPC and family cohesion increased, with adolescents reporting significantly higher levels of IPC and lower levels of family cohesion relative to their parents. Further probing of the trends driving these discrepancies yielded a distinct pattern of results for IPC and family cohesion. Adolescent involvement in IPC is associated with more negative perspectives of family functioning relative to parents. These findings imply a mechanism through which triangulation confers risk to adolescents, and highlight that divergence in parent and adolescent perspectives of family functioning fluctuates depending on daily processes.

Sensitization in situ: Identifying interindividual differences in adolescentsʼ intraindividual responsiveness to daily interparental conflict

“…Inter‐ and intraindividual reliability were both good ( R C = .83, R 1F = .85; see Cranford et al, 2006). Because of the focus on adolescent sensitization, parent reports of daily IPC were not used in the current study; prior work using this sample indicates that parent and adolescent reports of daily IPC were moderately correlated at r = .47 (McCauley et al, 2021). Following usual practice (Bolger & Laurenceau, 2013), the repeated measures of IPC were separated into a person‐level, time‐invariant variable (calculated as the intraindividual mean across the repeated measures) that was set aside, and a situational, time‐varying variable ( DailyIPC it ) that was calculated as the daily deviation from the person‐specific mean and used as an intraindividual level predictor during analysis.…”

Family and individual risk factors for triangulation: Evaluating evidence for emotion coaching buffering effects

“…Second, our study was limited by self‐report assessments from one adolescent and one female caregiver per family. Family members engaged in triangulation tend to have discordant views of family interactions (McCauley et al, 2021). Collecting data from all family members, as well as family observation, may offer unique and valuable insights into triadic conflict processes.…”

“…Structural and Bowen family systems theories suggest that couples who struggle to resolve chronic arguments may draw in their child as a means of redistributing tension away from the couple relationship, thereby creating temporary stability (Bowen, 1978;Minuchin, 1974). Although displacing conflict tension may provide temporary relief to parents, reliance on children to resolve IPC may undermine parents' ability to directly address and resolve relational conflict, precipitating future conflicts (McCauley et al, 2021;Minuchin, 1974). Rigid patterns of routinely triangulating children in IPC are prognostic of family stress and anxiety (Bowen, 1978).…”

New conceptualizations and directions in the study of family context.

“…Nuttall, Valentino, Cummings, and Davies (2020) used a complex patterns-based approach to identify and characterize the family contexts in which children’s caregiving response to their parents occur. Also, McCauley, Sloan, Xia, and Fosco (2021) used daily diaries with adolescents to identify occurrences of triangulation, interparental conflict, and family cohesion.…”