What is it about?
We examined patterns of change across high school in family conflict reported by at-risk African American adolescents in Flint, Michigan. We found that approximately 75% of African American adolescents continually reported low levels of family conflict during high school and were less likely to report symptoms of anxiety, depression, and violence at age 20 than African American adolescents who reported initially low but increasing (11%), initially high but decreasing (10%), and chronically elevated levels of family conflict across high school (3%).
Featured Image
Why is it important?
This is the first longitudinal study to examine how family conflict changes during high school for African American students, and it is also the first to directly link differential changes in conflict within African American families to an increased risk of mental health problems for individuals transitioning to early adulthood. The findings implicate the family climate during high school as a potential target for intervention to prevent future mental illness and adjustment problems for individuals entering higher education settings or the adult workforce.
Perspectives
Despite stereotypes characterizing urban African American families as being highly dysfunctional, this research shows that the overwhelming majority of African American adolescents in a highly-impoverished area of Michigan report low frequencies of family conflict. This finding is consistent with the majority of research on adolescents' family conflict, which tends to focus on middle-class Caucasian students in the U.S.
Dr Daniel Ewon Choe
University of California Davis
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Developmental trajectories of African American adolescents’ family conflict: Differences in mental health problems in young adulthood., Developmental Psychology, January 2014, American Psychological Association (APA),
DOI: 10.1037/a0035199.
You can read the full text:
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
