The continued importance of quality parent-adolescent relationships during late adolescence

The quality of adolescents' relationships with residential parents has been found to predict many different health and behavioral youth outcomes; strong associations have also been found between these outcomes and family processes, and between relationship quality and family processes. Data from Rounds 1-5 of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1997 were used to examine hypotheses about the influence of the parent-adolescent relationship on subsequent adolescent mental well-being and delinquency, as mediated by family processes. Using structural equation modeling, we found that the influence of a positive residential parent-adolescent relationship on better mental well-being and fewer delinquency was entirely mediated by family routines, parental monitoring, and parental supportiveness, net of sociodemographic controls.