Interactions between relationship support from mothers, fathers, and best friends as related to adolescent adjustment during the transition to high school

Abstract

Supportive parent‐adolescent relationships are known to promote adolescent adjustment, but less is known about the interactive roles of supportive relationships with mothers, fathers, and best friends. The current study examined the interactive relations between mother‐adolescent, father‐adolescent, and best friend relationship support on adolescent internalizing and externalizing problems across the high school transition. Participants (N = 368, Mage = 13.60, 47% male, 58% White) reported on their perceived support from mothers, fathers, and best friends (at Time 1 [Grade 8]) and their depressive symptoms and externalizing behaviors (at Times 1 and 2 [Grade 9]). Path models revealed no interaction effects involving support from mothers, fathers, and best friends when predicting externalizing symptoms. However, when predicting T2 depressive symptoms, several compensatory interaction effects were found. Father supportiveness moderated the association between maternal supportiveness and later depressive symptoms, and maternal supportiveness similarly moderated the relation between father supportiveness and depressive symptoms. In both instances, more support from one parent was related to fewer depressive symptoms when youth experienced an unsupportive relationship with the other parent. Best friend support also moderated the associations between both maternal support and paternal support and later depressive symptoms, such that maternal and paternal support were related to fewer subsequent depressive symptoms when youth experienced low and average (but not high) levels of friend support. The findings highlight the importance of considering networks of close relationships in the study of depressive symptoms during adolescence.