Strength in families: Parental resilience, marital dynamics, and adolescent anxiety and substance use

This study followed 604 Mexican-origin families over four waves to see how parents' resilience relates to their children's anxiety and substance use in adolescence. It looked at how warm and satisfied parents are in their marriage, and how much conflict between parents the adolescent perceives. Mothers' resilience was linked to lower adolescent anxiety and substance use through warmer marital interactions, higher marital satisfaction and less perceived conflict. Fathers' resilience predicted mothers' marital warmth. The authors present parental resilience as a resource that works through the couple relationship to shape family processes and adolescent adjustment.

Key points

• The study used four waves of data from 604 families, with adolescents averaging 12.41 years old at the start (54.3% girls).
• Wives' resilience predicted their own marital warmth.
• Husbands' resilience predicted wives' marital warmth.
• Wives' resilience was indirectly linked to lower adolescent anxiety and substance use through warmer marital interactions, higher marital satisfaction and lower perceived interparental conflict.
• The authors describe parental resilience as an upstream driver of family processes that shape adolescent psychopathology.

Limitations

Only the abstract is available, so effect sizes, the study setting and the measures used are not reported. The sample is Mexican-origin families, so the findings may not apply to other groups. The country hints (SG, CN, US) are not supported by the abstract, so no country is listed. The study is observational and does not test an intervention.