Adolescents' appraisals of their parents' marital conflicts and their own depressive symptoms

Abstract

The present study examined the mediatorial role of adolescents' appraisals of their parents' marital conflict on the adolescents' depressive symptoms. The adolescents' fathers and mothers completed scales tapping marital attributions, which in turn assessed the seriousness of their marital conflict. The adolescents completed measures appraising their parents' marital conflict, their emotional bonding toward their parents, and their depressive symptoms. The results indicated that the more severe the martial conflict was, the more the adolescents felt caught between their parents, and that, in turn, the adolescents, regardless of their gender, felt threat and self-blame for their parents' marital conflict. However, the appraisals of threat and self-blame were linked with depressive symptoms only for the boys. Also, the seriousness of the marital conflicts was linked to the adolescents' emotional bonding toward their parents, especially their fathers. In terms of depressive symptoms, the significance of the adolescents' emotional bonding with the same-sex parent was indicated. Using triadic data, only the mothers' appraisals were significantly linked to the adolescents' appraisals of their parents' marital conflict, and neither the mothers' nor the fathers' appraisals were found to be directly related to the adolescents' depressive symptoms.