Parent–Adolescent Relationship Quality and Parenting Stress Across More Than Two Decades: The Mediating Role of Depressive Symptoms

Abstract

Parenting stress is associated with negative outcomes for both parents and their children, and it may be influenced by the quality of relationships that parents had with their own parents. To enhance understanding of this intergenerational relation, the present study examined whether stability and change in depressive symptoms mediated the association between parent–adolescent relationship quality during adolescence and subsequent parenting stress almost 25 years later. Using data from all five waves of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) restricted dataset from the United States, the study included adolescents who were between 12 and18 years old at Wave 1 and had at least one child at Wave 5 (2016–2018; N = 4890; M_age at Wave 1 = 15.67, SD_age at Wave 1 = 1.50). A modified version of the random intercept cross-lagged model was used to account for both within- and between-person levels of depressive symptoms. Findings indicated that high levels of parent–adolescent relationship quality (with both mothers and fathers) were related to low levels of depressive symptoms that were stable over the almost 25 years of the study (between-person individual differences). In turn, low levels of depressive symptoms that were stable over time were associated with low levels of parenting stress in parenthood. Results underscore the potential long-term value of interventions that enhance parent–adolescent relationship quality in adolescence, as these could reduce enduring depressive symptoms and parenting stress in future generations.