Speaker
Description
Approximately 1 in 7 adolescents experience mental ill health internationally. The prevalence of these problems highlights the importance of identifying risk factors for adolescent mental health to develop effective prevention strategies. Family processes and relationship dynamics have a pronounced influence on child development. Previous studies have demonstrated that interparental conflict is associated with adolescents’ externalizing and internalizing problems. These associations may be direct and indirect through the mediating role of parent-child relationships. As adolescents gradually move from their families to broader social networks, the pathway from interparental relationship dynamics to adolescent mental health via parent-child interactions may weaken, while the influence of peer relationships becomes increasingly prominent. The current study synthesized both family dynamics and broader social contexts to investigate how interparental relationships influence children’s mental health-specifically emotional difficulties, conduct and peer problems, and prosocial behaviours- by focusing on the mediating roles of parent-child relationships and peer attachment. This study utilized data from the first two waves of Growing Up in Ireland Study (GUI Cohort 98’; https://www.growingup.gov.ie/growing-up-in-ireland-official-publications-from-the-child-cohort/). The structural equation modelling results showed that parent-child conflict mediates the association between interparental relationship dissatisfaction and insecure peer attachment (Standardized indirect effect = .04, p < .001), and insecure peer attachment further mediates the link between parent-child conflict and youth mental health problems (Standardized indirect effect = .05, p < .001). These findings highlight that peer attachment serves as another indirect pathway through which parent-child relationships influence youth mental health outcomes. This study also provides new insights into the intergenerational transmission of interpersonal relationship dynamics. The results provide research-based evidence for prevention by identifying social relationships through which family dynamics influence adolescent mental health. This mechanism informs early identification of at-risk adolescents and provides insights for inter- and transdisciplinary prevention approaches in both family and educational settings.
| Conflict of interest | N/A |
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