Citation
Chen, Ping & Harris, Kathleen Mullan (2018). Long-term protective effects of adolescent family relations: Gendered trajectory of depression into adulthood. Annual Meeting of the Population Association of America. Denver, CO.Abstract
Previous cross-sectional studies with regional or small community samples have found that positive parent-child relations can have short-term protective effects against depression in children and adolescents. Our study uses nationally-representative data from Add Health and a developmental and longitudinal perspective to examine the long-term protective effects of adolescent family relations and the gender-specific trajectories of depression into adulthood. We use two composite measures, family cohesion, and lack of parent-child conflict, to investigate how trajectories of depression vary among males and females by positive levels of family relations over the twenty-year life course that spans from early adolescence to mid-adulthood. Our results suggest that positive adolescent family relations have long-term protective effects for psychological well-being among both males and females over the life course. In growth-curve models we examine whether several environmental protective/risk factors explain differences in the age-related patterns of depressive symptoms due to contrasting levels of adolescent family relations.URL
https://paa.confex.com/paa/2018/webprogrampreliminary/Paper22665.htmlKeyword(s)
family adolescent family relations adolescenceReference Type
Conference proceedingBook Title
Annual Meeting of the Population Association of AmericaSeries Title
Family contexts and well-being in youth and early adulthoodAuthor(s)
Chen, PingHarris, Kathleen Mullan