Adolescents

Friendships convey developmental advantages. Adolescents without friends suffer from a host of difficulties. Much more is known about which friendships are likely to be stable over time, than about maternal contributions to friendship stability. To this end, the current study examines characteristics of mother-child relationship quality (i.e., child reported social support, negativity and relationship importance) and maternal parenting practices (i.e., child-reported behavioral control and psychological control) that predict the dissolution of children’s friendships in a sample of primary school (ages 10 to 11) and middle school (ages 11 to 14) students attending seven public schools in Lithuania. A total of 574 participants (290 female, 284 male) completed identical surveys at six time points across two consecutive school years. Peer nominations provided an index of peer status (i.e., acceptance or liking and rejection or disliking), which were also included as predictors in order to control the contribution of peer status. Friendships were defined as dyads in which both partners nominated each other as friends. Dissolved Friendships were defined as dyads that were reciprocated at Time 1 but one or both partners failed to nominate the other as a friend as a subsequent time point.
Discrete time survival analyses were conducted to predict friendship dissolution from maternal parenting practices variables, mother-child relationship quality variables, peer status variables, and demographic variables (sex, dyad sex, nutrition, household structure, relationship rank). Two sets of analyses were conducted. The individual model explored the degree to which individual scores on each variable predicted friendship dissolution. The dyadic model the degree to which dyadic differences (i.e., the absolute difference between friend scores) on each variable predicted friendship dissolution.

Global research on psychosocial factors related to food allergies and youth have increased significantly over the last decade. A plethora of countries provide literature indicating adolescents with food allergies experience social isolation, depression, anxiety, and fear. Most of the literature however favors parental perspectives with limited studies exploring adolescent subjective perspectives. The purpose of this hermeneutic phenomenological study was to explore the lived experiences of adolescents living with food allergies; the goal was to bring awareness to the ascribed meaning of food allergies from the perspective of adolescents and the impact of living with food allergies from day-to-day. Watson’s caring science and Erikson’s psychosocial theory were guiding frameworks for the study with story theory used to guide individual semi-structured interviews (n=14) (11-14 years). Analysis of data entailed various steps congruent with Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis. Four superordinate themes emerged from the data: (1) Living with Restraints: A Way of Life, (2) Managing Exposure, (3) Experiencing Stigma, and (4) Experiencing Lack of Knowledge. Results indicated adolescents living with food allergies have unique experiences that contribute to psychosocial upheavals and that traditional biological management may be too simplistic for promoting whole adolescent well-being and healthy development. Study findings may contribute to evidence-based interventions that nurture care for the whole adolescent.

Resilience is imperative during adolescence. Previous studies focused on the moderating role of parenting between temperament and adaptive outcomes in children (Karreman et al., 2010; Wang et al., 2016). However, little is known about how personality such as neuroticism affects resilience during adolescence, and how parenting influences neuroticism and resilience at this life stage. The current study investigated the longitudinal effects of neuroticism and both positive and negative parenting on selfreports of resilience in a sample of high-school adolescents in Lithuania (N = 859). The results suggested that high levels of neuroticism predicted declining rates of resilience. This association was moderated by parent support and behavioral control. Specifically, high levels of parent support and behavioral control would attenuate the effect of neuroticism on resilience during adolescence, but only when the neuroticism level of the individual was not high. The findings indicate that the neuroticism erodes the advantages that are otherwise associated with positive parenting. The findings have important implications. Good parenting is effective to foster resilience among children with low neuroticism, but for children with high neuroticism, more attention should be paid to the specific skills that might directly foster resilience rather than relying on parenting.