title: Adolescents', mothers', and fathers' gendered coping strategies during conflict: Youth and parent influences on conflict resolution and psychopathology.
abstract: We observed gendered coping strategies and conflict resolution outcomes used by adolescents and parents during a conflict discussion task to evaluate associations with current and later adolescent psychopathology. We studied 137 middle- to upper-middle-class, predominantly Caucasian families of adolescents (aged 11-16 years, 65 males) who represented a range of psychological functioning, including normative, subclinical, and clinical levels of problems. Adolescent coping strategies played key roles both in the extent to which parent-adolescent dyads resolved conflict and in the trajectory of psychopathology symptom severity over a 2-year period. Gender-prototypic adaptive coping strategies were observed in parents but not youth, (i.e., more problem solving by fathers than mothers and more regulated emotion-focused coping by mothers than fathers). Youth-mother dyads more often achieved full resolution of conflict than youth-father dyads. There were generally not bidirectional effects among youth and parents' coping across the discussion except boys' initial use of angry/hostile coping predicted fathers' angry/hostile coping. The child was more influential than the parent on conflict resolution. This extended to exacerbation/alleviation of psychopathology over 2 years: higher conflict resolution mediated the association of adolescents' use of problem-focused coping with decreases in symptom severity over time. Lower conflict resolution mediated the association of adolescents' use of angry/hostile emotion coping with increases in symptom severity over time. Implications of findings are considered within a broadened context of the nature of coping and conflict resolution in youth-parent interactions, as well as on how these processes impact youth well-being and dysfunction over time.
authors.affiliation: Brown University.
authors.forename: Kristine
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Marceau
authors.affiliation: University of Wisconsin-Madison.
authors.forename: Carolyn
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Zahn-Waxler
authors.affiliation: Iowa State University.
authors.forename: Elizabeth A
authors.initials: EA
authors.lastname: Shirtcliff
authors.affiliation: St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.
authors.forename: Jane E
authors.initials: JE
authors.lastname: Schreiber
authors.affiliation: University of California,Davis.
authors.forename: Paul
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Hastings
authors.affiliation: University of Minnesota.
authors.forename: Bonnie
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Klimes-Dougan
mesh_terms: D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D000293:Adolescent; D000294:Adolescent Behavior / Q000523:psychology; D000328:Adult; D002648:Child; D005220:Fathers / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D005783:Gender Identity; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009035:Mothers / Q000523:psychology*; D017008:Negotiating / Q000523:psychology*; D000297:Psychology, Adolescent; D011599:Psychopathology