It takes two to tango: how parents' and adolescents' personalities link to the quality of their mutual relationship.

Full Abstract

According to J. Belsky's (1984) process model of parenting, both adolescents' and parents' personality should exert a significant impact on the quality of their mutual relationship. Using multi-informant, symmetric data on the Big Five personality traits and the relationship quality of mothers, fathers, and two adolescent children, the current study set out to test this prediction. Adolescents' agreeableness and parents' extraversion emerged as predictors of relationship warmth, whereas parents' openness emerged as a predictor of low restrictive control. In addition, some gender-specific effects emerged. Overall, parents' and adolescents' traits equally predicted the amount of relationship warmth, whereas adolescents' unique personality more strongly predicted the amount of restrictive control. The predictive power of adolescents' personality increased with age. Personality characteristics that affected relationship quality were partly shared between parents and their adolescent children. Findings support Belsky's (1984) notion that both parents' and children's personality predict the quality of their mutual relationship, though the relative predictive power of children and parents depends on the type of outcome variable and the age of the children.

Author information

Author/s: Denissen, Jaap J A (JJ); van Aken, Marcel A G (MA); Dubas, Judith S (JS);

Affiliation: Institute of Psychology, Humboldt-University, Berlin, Germany. jjadenissen(-atsign-)gmail.com

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article

Journal: Developmental psychology (Dev Psychol), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2009-Jul; vol 45 (issue 4) : pp 928-41

Dates: Created 2009/07/09; Completed 2009/09/14;

PMID: 19586171, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 9/14/2009, IMS Date: )

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

External Links for this article
(including full text providers, if available):

Click Electronic Full-text Provider Links to see options for finding the electronic full text links to this article. Note there may be a subscription or fee required for access to the full text. See our FAQ for information on finding FREE full text articles.

This article may also be located in paper journal collections available in many libraries. Use the Journal and Publication Information above to find the full article.