Divorce, Family Conflict, and Adolescents Well-BeingAu.docx

Divorce, Family Conflict, and Adolescents' Well-Being
Author(s): David Mechanic and Stephen Hansell
Source: Journal of Health and Social Behavior, Vol. 30, No. 1
(Mar., 1989), pp. 105-116
Published by: American Sociological Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2136916
Accessed: 20-03-2018 14:23 UTC
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars,
researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information
technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about
JSTOR, please contact [email protected]
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the
Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
http://about.jstor.org/terms
American Sociological Association is collaborating with JSTOR
to digitize, preserve and
extend access to Journal of Health and Social Behavior
This content downloaded from 130.68.183.9 on Tue, 20 Mar
2018 14:23:49 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Divorce, Family Conflict, and Adolescents' Well-Being*
DAVID MECHANIC
STEPHEN HANSELL
Rutgers University
Journal of Health and Social Behavior 1989, Vol. 30
(March):105-116
The relative effects of family conflict and divorce on the well-
being of adolescents
were examined in a longitudinal study of a heterogeneous
community sample.
Higher levels of family conflict were associated with increases
in adolescents'
depressed mood, anxiety, and physical symptoms over time. In
contrast, neither
recent divorce nor earlier divorce was associated with
longitudinal changes in any
health outcomes. Also, adolescents living in intact families
with high conflict had
significantly poorer well-being than those living in families of
divorce with low
conflict. Finally, the longitudinal effects of divorce and family
conflict did not
differ by age and sex, but Hispanic adolescents experienced
more negative effects
of family conflict than non-Hispanic whites, and the well-being
of Asian
adolescents was influenced more strongly by recent divorce.
The divorce of parents is a major stressful

life event for children and adolescents, often
having negative effects on health and well-
being (Emery 1982; Guidubaldi and Perry
1985; Wallerstein and Kelly 1980). Increas-
ing evidence suggests that the process of
divorce often involves conflict and family
disharmony which are more distressing and
damaging to children than the separation itself
(Dancy and Handal 1984; Emery 1982; Enos
and Handal 1986; Hetherington, Cox, and
Cox 1981; Peterson and Zill 1986; Shaw and
Emery 1987; Slater and Haber 1984). Chil-
dren often manifest an "acute distress syn-
drome" (Rutter 1979) immediately after
divorce, but the effects are usually time-
limited (Hetherington 1979), whereas the
effects of family conflict are often more
enduring (Hetherington, Cox, and Cox 1978).
In addition, many parents who are embroiled
in marital discord never divorce, and yet
* Direct correspondence to: David Mechanic,
Institute for Health, Health Care Policy, and Aging
Research, Rutgers University, 30 College Avenue,
New Brunswick, NJ 08903. This research was

supported in part by grants from the NIMH (No.
39590) and the William T. Grant Foundation.
Requests for reprints should be addressed to David
Mechanic, Institute for Health, Health Care Policy,
and Aging Research, Rutgers University, 30
College Ave., New Brunswick, NJ 08903.
children in such families often have serious
problems (Hetherington et al. 1978). Finally,
divorces that end painful family conflict
actually may improve children's well-being
(Emery 1982; McCord, McCord, and Thurbur
1962).
With a few notable exceptions (Fursten-
berg, Peterson, Nord, and Zill 1983; Guidu-
baldi and Perry 1985; Peterson and Zill
1986), most of the research on the relative
effects of divorce and family conflict has been
based on relatively small and homogeneous
samples, often drawn from clinical popula-
tions (Emery 1982). Existing community-
based studies have not examined the relative
effects of these predictors on longitudinal
changes in adolescents' well-being. In addi-
tion, few studies have used more than a single
measure of well-being, although Emery
(1982) notes that the effects of divorce and
family conflict may vary according to the
outcomes that are assessed.
Data that were collected as part of another
study allowed us to explore the longitudinal
effects of divorce and family conflict in a
large, heterogeneous community sample of
adolescents. Measures of four conceptually

and empirically distinct dimensions of well-
being were available: depressed mood, anxi-
ety, self-esteem, and physical symptoms.
These secondary data were not designed to
105
2018 14:23:49 UTC
106 JOURNAL OF HEALTH AND SOCIAL BEHAVIOR
answer the specific questions addressed, and
thus have shortcomings that will be described;
nevertheless, this study provides an opportu-
nity to begin to examine the longitudinal
effects of divorce and family conflict on
multiple dimensions of well-being among
adolescents in the community.
Divorce is a complex process, and may
involve a constellation of stressful life events
that tax the child's coping capacities (Guidu-
baldi and Perry 1985; Wallerstein 1985a).
Examples of such stressors include residential
and school changes, family economic difficul-
ties, alienating custody disputes, and separa-
tion from friends. Although the influences of
stressors associated with divorce probably
diminish over time as families reconstitute
themselves, long-term effects persist for some
children (Hetherington, Cox, and Cox 1985;
Rickel and Langner 1985). Thus it remains

unclear to what degree separation from a
parent through divorce adversely affects the
child's health and well-being independently
of the stressful life events that often are
associated with it.
Both divorce and family conflict probably
erode family members' capacity to nurture
children's well-being by diverting time and
attention from the children and by undermin-
ing the children's perceptions of parental
interest (Hess and Camara 1979; Hethering-
ton, Cox, and Cox 1979; Rutter 1971). In
addition, parents engaged in marital discord
may be more likely to neglect their children,
to punish them as a result of their own
frustration and distress, or to manipulate them
to gain advantages in the conflict with their
spouse. Consequently the negative effects of
family conflict may be caused by decreases in
the quality of family relationships.
The evidence about sex differences in the
impact of divorce is mixed. Some studies
suggest that divorce has a more negative
impact on boys than on girls (Emery 1982;
Emery and O'Leary 1982; Porter and O'Leary
1980; Wallerstein and Kelly 1980). Other
studies, however, found no sex differences
(Slater, Stewart, and Linn 1983), and non-
clinical studies generally found fewer sex
differences than studies based on clinical
samples (Emery 1982). Still others suggest
that the long-term effects of divorce may be
worse for girls than for boys (Hetherington et
al. 1985; Wallerstein 1985b).

Thus the existing literature suggests five
hypotheses about the relative effects of
divorce and family conflict, which we
examine in this secondary analysis. First, the
deleterious effects of family conflict are
expected to be more damaging than the
effects of divorce or separation from a parent.
Second, children of divorce who go on to live
in a conflict-free setting are expected to
experience less distress than those in intact
families characterized by conflict. Third, we
expect the negative effects of divorce to be
mediated through the stressful life events that
often accompany divorce. Fourth, we expect
the negative effects of divorce and family
conflict to be mediated through a reduction in
the quality of relationships between parents
and adolescents, as reflected in adolescents'
perceptions of lower parental interest and
greater punishment. Finally, recent divorce
will affect the well-being of adolescent boys
more than that of girls over a one-year period,
while earlier divorce will influence girls'
health more than boys'.
In addition, little evidence exists as to
whether divorce and family conflict have
stronger effects on younger or on older
children, or on children with varying racial
and ethnic backgrounds (Emery 1982). We
did not form specific hypotheses about such
effects, but the heterogeneous sample in this
study provided an opportunity to explore
them. Finally, divorce is only one of many

causes of separation from a parent that may
loosen crucial attachment bonds and may
degrade adolescents' well-being. In our anal-
yses we attempted to distinguish the effects of
divorce from those of separations from
parents or stepparents caused by parental
death.
SAMPLE AND PROCEDURES
Longitudinal data were obtained from the
first two waves of a three-wave, three-year
study of adolescents' health and well-being.
We recruited adolescents from the seventh,
ninth, and eleventh grades of 19 public
schools in five communities in New Jersey,
which serve the inner city as well as
middle-class suburbs. Involvement in the
study required the cooperation of each school
system, the personnel of each individual
school, and the written consent of both
students and their parents.
All adolescents who were present in health
or gym classes in the fall of 1984 were asked
2018 14:23:49 UTC
ADOLESCENT'S WELL-BEING 107
to volunteer; approximately 80 percent (3,215)
agreed to participate. Permission forms were

mailed at least twice to their parents with a
letter describing the study. We received
written permissions from 48 percent (1,528)
of the parents; 81 percent (1,235) of these
adolescents subsequently completed usable
questionnaires in school under the supervision
of our field staff. In the second wave, 97
percent (1,193) of these adolescents were
resurveyed with the same measures used in
Wave One. The analyses reported here are
based on the 1,067 cases that provided
complete data on all measures used in the
analysis, approximately 33 percent of the
adolescents present in the health or gym
classes from which respondents were re-
cruited originally.
In addition we interviewed one parent,
usually the mother, of 88 percent (842) of a
random sample of 957 of the adolescents who
were studied in the first wave. These
interviews, conducted by telephone, lasted an
average of 45 minutes; we asked the parents
about their own health as well as about the
health of their adolescent.
This sample contains a variety of selection
biases, such as the omission of students who
were not in school and of those who declined
to participate. Most important, however, only
about half of the parents returned signed
consents; phone consent and passive consent
were not acceptable to our human subjects
reviewers. Comparisons with census data
showed that the distributions of sex, race, and

ethnicity in our sample were very similar to
those in the population. Parents of our
adolescents, however, had significantly higher
levels of education than adults of similar age
in the population. Thus the sample is broad
and heterogeneous, but cannot be considered
representative.
MEASURES
A major independent variable was the
adolescents' report of the degree of family
conflict in Wave One. A single item asked
whether or not there was "a lot of quarreling
or fighting where you live in the past year."
Although this item did not refer specifically to
parental conflict, and may have included
quarreling among siblings or between parents
and adolescents, we assumed that all quarrel-
ing or fighting contributed to a noxious family
environment. Thirty-eight percent of the
adolescents reported frequent quarreling or
fighting at home.
A limitation of this measure is that when
adolescents who lived with one parent
reported family conflict, we did not know
whether they were referring to continuing
marital conflict between the parent at home
and the parent who had left, or to conflict
among other people who currently lived at
home. Thus our measure of family conflict
may have had somewhat different meaning
for adolescents in single-parent households
than for those in families with two parents.

We cannot resolve this ambiguity with the
data available in this secondary analysis, but
we present some information that supports the
convergent validity of our measure of family
conflict. We also examined whether family
conflict had different effects for adolescents
who did and who did not live with two
parents or stepparents.
We created two dummy variables for
parental marital status in Wave One. One
dummy variable was coded 1 for the seven
percent of the adolescents whose parents or
stepparents had been divorced or separated
recently (in the past year), and 0 for others.
The second dummy variable was coded 1 for
the 19 percent of the adolescents who
reported an earlier divorce or marital separa-
tion (more than a year ago), and 0 for others.
The remaining 74 percent of the adolescents
lived in intact families.'
We derived a measure of current separation
from parents based on who lived with the ad-
olescent. Yet because no distinction was made
between natural parents and stepparents in the
available date, this measure did not capture all
separations from natural parents. In particular,
it did not reflect current separation from a nat-
ural parent for the 12 percent of the adoles-
cents who had experienced parental divorce or
death and who currently lived with one natural
parent and one stepparent or with two steppar-
ents. The distribution of this measure showed
that 81 percent of the adolescents lived with
two parents or stepparents, 15 percent lived

with a mother or stepmother only, two percent
lived with a father or stepfather only, and two
percent reported living with no parent or step-
parent. We combined the last three categories
to contrast current separation from at least one
parent or stepparent with no separation.
Adolescents are separated from parents and
2018 14:23:49 UTC
stepparents for reasons other than divorce.
The data did not include specific information
about the reasons for separations, so we could
not disentangle the relationships among di-
vorce and separation from parents unambigu-
ously. We asked adolescents, however,
whether a parent or stepparent had ever died;
thus for the four percent of the sample who
answered affirmatively, we could assess the
effects of one specific type of separation from
parents other than divorce.
Other independent variables assessed in
Wave One were sex, grade level, race and
ethnicity, parental education, and an eight-
item scale of the stressful life events reported
by adolescents in the past year other than
divorce, death of a parent, separation from a
parent, and family conflict. The low internal

consistency of this scale (alpha = .50)
reflected the relative independence of these
life events. In the second wave, adolescents
also assessed the undesirability of each life
event. Items for this scale and for others that
were created for this study are listed in the
appendix.
Adolescents' perceptions of parental inter-
est in Wave One were measured with
nine-item scales of paternal interest (alpha =
.91) and maternal interest (alpha = .88).
These two scales were summed into a scale of
overall perceived parental interest; ratings for
single parents were doubled to obtain the
same metric as the sum of scores from both
parents. Two five-item scales assessed adoles-
cents' perceptions of paternal punishment
(alpha = .70) and maternal punishment
(alpha = .71). These two scales also were
summed into a scale of overall perceived
parental punishment; ratings for single parents
were doubled. We asked adolescents to rate
parental interest and punishment only for
parents or stepparents with whom they
currently lived. Thus a limitation of these
measures is that we had no information about
adolescents' perceptions of the interest or
punishment by parents or stepparents from
whom they were separated currently.
We assessed four dependent measures of
well-being in both waves of data collection.
The Center for Epidemiological Studies
Depression scale (CESD) (Radloff 1977)
consisted of 20 items that measured relatively

common symptoms of depressed mood (alpha
= .90). Although the CESD was developed
for adults, Schoenbach, Kaplan, Wagner,
Grimson, and Miller (1983) found that it had
good internal consistency in a study of
adolescents.
In addition, we created a four-item scale
that measured anxiety (alpha = .79), and we
used Rosenberg's (1965, 1979) scale of 10
items to assess self-esteem (alpha = .82). We
also included a 12-item measure of common
physical symptoms (Mechanic 1979, 1980)
(alpha = .66). The moderate internal consis-
tency of this scale reflected the fact that
symptoms such as headaches and stomach-
aches were reported frequently, but that
others, such as constipation and vomiting,
were reported relatively rarely.
Parents were not asked to rate family
conflict, but we asked them whether they
were very happy, somewhat happy, or not
very happy with their marriages; responses to
this question helped to illuminate the meaning
of adolescents' reports of family conflict.
Parents also reported how often their child
exhibited behavioral problems on a four-item
scale that included uncontrollable temper
tantrums or outbursts, irritability, doing the
opposite of what was asked of him or her, and
disagreeing or quarreling with people for no
apparent reason (alpha = .73). Parents also
reported how much they disagreed with their
adolescent about seven types of conventional

behavior such as coming home on time, doing
homework, and doing chores and jobs around
the house (alpha = .79). Finally, a 19-item
scale asked parents to rate their child's
psychological distress in terms of sadness,
loneliness, nervousness, having enough en-
ergy, and sleep disturbances (alpha = .83).
RESULTS
Sample Characteristics
The distribution of adolescents by grade
and sex in the final sample was not
significantly different from the distributions
in the sample of adolescents who volunteered
or in the sample for whom we received
parental permission. In addition, the percent-
ages of adolescents who volunteered, and of
parents who gave their permission, were not
associated significantly with adolescents' well-
being aggregated by school district. We
speculate, however, that selection biases
made it more likely that adolescents in our
sample were more affluent, healthier, and
happier than those in the sample of volunteers
2018 14:23:49 UTC
or the total school population. Because

adolescents from the poorest and most
disrupted families were less likely to be
surveyed, selection biases may have attenu-
ated somewhat the effects of divorce and
family conflict.
The sample included students with hetero-
geneous racial and ethnic backgrounds and so-
ciocultural characteristics. Of the 1,067 ado-
lescents, 54 percent were female and 46 percent
were male; 35 percent were in the seventh
grade in Wave One, 37 percent were in the
ninth grade, and 28 percent were in the elev-
enth grade. Eight percent of the adolescents
were black, four percent were Hispanic, four
percent were Asian, 81 percent were non-
Hispanic whites, and three percent were mem-
bers of other races or ethnicities. Finally, five
percent of the parents had less than a high
school education, 23 percent had graduated
from high school, 15 percent had some col-
lege, 24 percent had graduated from college,
and 33 percent had postgraduate training.
Correlates of Divorce and Family Conflict
Table 1 displays the joint distribution of the
divorce of parents or stepparents, current
separation from a parent or stepparent, and
TABLE 1. Mean Family Conflict by Divorce,
Current Separation from Parents,
and Parental Death
Adolescent Currently Separated from One or Two
Parents or Stepparents

Parent or Stepparent
Ever Died
No Yes
Parent or Stepparent No .30 .22
Ever Divorced (3%, 27) (2%,18)
Yes .41 .29
(14%, 147) (1%, 7)
Adolescent Not Currently Separated from
Two Parents or Stepparents
Parent or Stepparent
Ever Died
No Yes
Parent or Stepparent No .37 .63
Ever Divorced (70%, 743) (1%, 8)
Yes .45 .50
(10%, 111) (1%, 6)
NOTE: N = 1,067. For each cell, the percentage of the
total sample and the number of cases are given in
parentheses.
the death of a parent or stepparent in relation
to family conflict. Fully 70 percent of the
adolescents reported no current separation

from parents and no parental divorce or death.
The second most common pattern involved 14
percent of the adolescents, who were sepa-
rated currently from at least one parent and
who reported parental divorce but no parental
death. Finally, 10 percent of the adolescents
reported parental divorce but no current
separation from parents or parental death.
Other patterns were much less frequent.2
Mean levels of family conflict also are
displayed in Table 1 for each combination of
the divorce of parents or stepparents, current
separation from parents or stepparents, and
the death of a parent or stepparent. A
three-way analysis of variance showed that
adolescents whose parents had divorced
reported significantly higher levels of family
conflict than did those from intact families (F
= 5.64, df = 1, 1057, p < .02). Parental
death was not associated significantly with
family conflict despite high levels of reported
conflict; the absence of statistical significance
may reflect the small number of adolescents
who reported the death of a parent or
stepparent. Finally, current separation from
parents was not associated significantly with
family conflict, and there were no significant
interaction effects.
Thirty-six percent of the 795 adolescents
from intact families reported family conflict,
as did 40 percent of the 200 adolescents

whose parents or stepparents had divorced
earlier and 51 percent of the 72 adolescents
whose parents or stepparents had divorced
recently. These data suggested that although
the process of divorce was associated signifi-
cantly with higher levels of family conflict,
the absolute differences in perceptions of
family conflict between adolescents from
intact families and from families of divorce
were relatively small.
The Wave One interviews with parents
provided some evidence about the meaning of
adolescents' reports of family conflict. Par-
ents' reports of greater satisfaction with their
marriages were associated significantly with
adolescents' reports of less family conflict (r
= - .17) and with higher levels of perceived
parental interest (r = .18). In contrast,
parents' reports of disagreement with their
adolescents were not associated significantly
with adolescents' reports of family conflict,
but were associated significantly with less
2018 14:23:49 UTC
perceived parental interest (r = - .17) and
with greater perceived parental punishment (r
= .25). These correlations suggested that
adolescents' ratings of family conflict re-

flected parental marital conflict more strongly
than conflict between adolescents and their
parents.3
Divorce, Family Conflict, and Adolescents'
Well-Being
The well-being of this sample was fairly
stable across waves, as shown by the
autocorrelations for depressed mood (r =
.59), anxiety (r = .53), self-esteem (r =
.64), and physical symptoms (r = .57).
Adolescents' reports of family conflict, how-
ever, were somewhat less stable over time (r
.38).
The longitudinal influences of family
conflict, divorce, current separation from
parents, and parental death on adolescents'
well-being were tested in ordinary least
squares (OLS) regressions that also included
the adolescents' sex, grade level, race and
ethnicity, and parental education as predic-
tors. For each dependent variable measured in
Wave Two, we included all Wave One
predictors and the same dependent variable as
we measured in Wave One. Thus the results
of these regressions, which are shown in
Table 2, indicated changes in well-being over
time that were associated with each predictor.4
The results supported the first hypothesis-
that family conflict would have more direct
effects on longitudinal changes in well-being

than would divorce, current separation from
parents, or parental death. Specifically, higher
levels of family conflict were associated
significantly with longitudinal increases in
depressed mood, anxiety, and physical symp-
toms. In contrast, divorce, current separation
from parents, and parental death were not
associated significantly with changes in any
health measure over time.
Other results showed that in comparison
with males, females had significant longitudi-
nal increases in depressed mood, anxiety, and
physical symptoms, and significant decreases
in self-esteem. Also, older adolescents evi-
denced significant increases in anxiety over
time, while blacks and Asians showed
significant decreases in anxiety over time.5
Because of the ambiguities in our measure
of family conflict, it is possible that this
measure had different effects for adolescents
who reported a current separation from at
least one parent or stepparent than for those
reporting no separation. In analyses that are
not shown, we tested the interaction effect
involving current separation and family con-
flict for each dependent measure of well-
being, but none were significant. Although it
was not necessary statistically, we ran
separate regressions for each group. In
TABLE 2. Regressions of Wave Two Adolescents' Well-Being
on Wave One Predictors
Wave Two Wave Two Wave Two Wave Two

Wave One Predictors CESD Anxiety Self-Esteem Physical
Symptoms
Wave One Well-Being .54*** .49*** .63*** .55
Family Conflict .07** .07* -.02 .07
Recent Divorce .05 .04 -.04 .03
Earlier Divorce .01 .00 .02 .01
Current Separation from Parents .01 .02 .00 -.01
Parent Ever Died .02 .00 .00 .00
Sex - .08** - . 10*** .07** -.07
Grade .04 .12*** .02 .02
Black .03 - .06* .01 - .02
Hispanic .03 - .01 .03 - .05
Asian .01 -.05* -.01 -.02
Other Race -.01 .01 .00 .02
Parental Education -.03 .01 .03 .01
Adjusted R2 .36 .32 .42 .33
NOTE: N = 1,067. Family conflict, divorce, and parental death
are coded 1 for yes, 0 for no; current separation from
one or more parents or stepparents is coded 1, no current
separation is coded 0; sex is coded 1 for male, 0 for female;
dummy variables for race and ethnicity are coded 1 for the
relevant group, 0 for others, with non-Hispanic whites as
the reference category.
* Standardized beta is significant, p<.05.
** Standardized beta is significant, p<.01.
* Standardized beta is significant, p<.001.
2018 14:23:49 UTC

analyses that are not presented here, the
significant direct effects for each group were
almost identical to those shown in Table 2 for
the whole sample. The only difference was
that family conflict did not affect depressed
mood significantly for adolescents currently
separated from at least one parent or steppar-
ent. These data suggested that our measure of
family conflict had similar meaning for
adolescents who experienced varying degrees
of current separation from parents or
stepparents.6
Other data allowed us to examine the
perceived undesirability of divorce and family
conflict. In the second wave we asked
adolescents to rate the undesirability of the
life events they reported. In support of the
first hypothesis, the results showed that
family conflict was significantly more unpleas-
ant than divorce (X2 = 34.8, df = 4, p <
.001). Of the 398 adolescents who reported
frequent quarreling or fighting at home in the
past year and who rated its undesirability,
fully 69 percent rated it very bad or somewhat
bad, 25 percent rated it neither good nor bad,
and only 6 percent rated it somewhat good or
very good. In contrast, of the 88 adolescents
who reported that their parents divorced or
separated in the past year and who rated its
undesirability, 42 percent rated it very bad or
somewhat bad, 33 percent rated it neither
good nor bad, and fully 25 percent rated it

somewhat good or very good.
The means in Table 3 supported the second
hypothesis. T-tests showed that for every
measure of well-being in both waves, adoles-
cents in intact families characterized by high
family conflict had significantly poorer well-
being than adolescents experiencing family
divorce who reported low family conflict.
In addition, the 37 adolescents who rated
divorce as bad or very bad in the second wave
had significantly higher levels of depressed
mood, anxiety, and physical symptoms and
significantly lower self-esteem than the 617
adolescents in intact families with no family
conflict. The well-being of these 37, how-
ever, was not significantly different from that
of the 348 adolescents in intact families with
family conflict. Thus divorce perceived as
undesirable had approximately the same
cross-sectional association with well-being as
did family conflict in intact families.
The findings for the 51 adolescents who
rated divorce as very good, good, or neither
good nor bad in Wave Two were less clear.
These respondents did have significantly
lower anxiety and higher self-esteem than the
348 adolescents in intact families with family
conflict, but they also had significantly higher
depressed mood than the 617 adolescents in
intact families without conflict.
Mediating Effects of Stressful Life Events
and Relationships with Parents

We examined the third hypothesis-that
stressful life events would mediate the
longitudinal effects of divorce-by adding
our measure of life events to the second step
of a hierarchical regression for each depen-
dent variable. The results, which are not
shown, did not support our hypothesis.
Stressful life events did not have any
significant direct or mediating effects on
well-being over time.
Similarly, we examined the fourth hypoth-
esis-that perceptions of the quality of
relationships with parents would mediate the
TABLE 3. Mean Adolescents' Well-Being by Divorce and
Family Conflict
No Parent or Stepparent Parent or Stepparent
Ever Divorced Divorced
No Family Conflict Family Conflict No Family Conflict Family
Conflict
Well-Being Measure (N = 507) (N = 288) (N = 155) (N = 117)
Wave One CESD 12.93 17.50 14.65 18.52
Wave Two CESD 12.00 15.64 13.50 17.76
Wave One Anxiety 7.51 8.84 7.74 8.85
Wave Two Anxiety 7.26 8.23 7.35 8.63
Wave One Self-Esteem 30.80 29.07 30.36 28.94
Wave Two Self-Esteem 31.52 30.33 31.39 30.02
Wave One Physical Symptoms 21.08 22.01 20.77 22.79
Wave Two Physical Symptoms 20.42 21.47 20.19 22.25
NOTE: For every measure of well-being in both waves, t-tests

showed that adolescents in intact families with high
conflict had significantly poorer well-being than adolescents in
families of divorce with low conflict.
2018 14:23:49 UTC
longitudinal effects of family conflict. In
analyses that are not shown, we added
perceived parental interest and punishment to
the second step of a hierarchical regression
for each dependent variable. Perceived paren-
tal interest was associated with longitudinal
increases in self-esteem, but contrary to our
fourth hypothesis, perceived relationships
with parents did not mediate any of the
longitudinal effects of divorce, family con-
flict, or the other predictors.
We also examined regression models in
which overall perceived parental interest and
punishment were disaggregated into separate
scales of perceived maternal and paternal
interest and punishment. The results, which
are not shown, showed that higher levels of
perceived maternal punishment were associ-
ated significantly with longitudinal increases
in depressed mood, and that higher levels of
perceived maternal interest were associated
significantly with increases in self-esteem
over time. Contrary to our hypotheses,

however, adolescents' perceptions of relation-
ships with mothers and fathers did not
mediate any of the direct longitudinal effects
of family conflict, divorce, or the other
predictors.
Subgroup Differences
The fifth hypothesis-that the effects of
recent divorce would be stronger for boys,
while the effects of earlier divorce would be
stronger for girls-was tested in separate
regressions for each dependent variable, in
which the appropriate interaction term was
entered after all other predictors. We also
tested interactions involving sex and family
conflict. The results, which are not shown,
indicated that one interaction was significant,
but in view of the large number of interactions
tested, this effect must be interpreted cau-
tiously. Family conflict was associated with
significantly higher levels of depressed mood
in Wave One for girls than for boys.
In addition, we tested all of the interactions
involving grade level with divorce and family
conflict. One interaction effect involving
grade level was significant, but this result
must be interpreted cautiously. Adolescents in
the seventh grade who reported recent divorce
also reported significant increases in anxiety
over time, whereas recent divorce was not
associated with increased anxiety for ninth
graders or eleventh graders.

Exploratory analyses that are not shown
revealed more consistent patterns of signifi-
cant interactions involving race and ethnicity.
Asian adolescents from recently divorced
families reported significantly more depressed
mood, anxiety, and physical symptoms over
time than did adolescents with other racial
and ethnic backgrounds. Also, Hispanic
adolescents who reported family conflict
evidenced significantly greater depressed
mood, anxiety, and physical symptoms over
time than did other adolescents.
DISCUSSION
The results supported the first hypothesis-
that family conflict would have more negative
effects on the well-being of adolescents than
would divorce or separation. However, the
measure of family conflict employed here did
not specify which family members were
involved, although other data suggested that it
reflected parental marital conflict more than
parent-child conflict. Relationships between
parents in conflict, and between parents and
their children, are far more complex than our
measures revealed; these findings need to be
replicated with more representative samples
and with detailed measures of family conflict.
The longitudinal results, however, showed
that family conflict influenced more dimen-
sions of the well-being of adolescents in this
sample than did divorce.
We obtained these results controlling for
current separation from a parent or steppar-

ent, and for whether a parent or stepparent
had ever died. Neither separation from
parents nor parental death had any significant
longitudinal effects on adolescents' well-
being; therefore they could not mediate any of
the effects of divorce. Of course, our
relatively crude measure of current separation
did not distinguish between natural parents
and stepparents; it is possible that a more
adequate measure of separation would pro-
duce different results. In addition, we specu-
late that the absence of any effect of parental
death on adolescents' well-being is due to the
small number of adolescents reporting this
life event and to the varying lengths of time
since it occurred.
The data also supported the second hypoth-
esis-that children of divorce living in a
2018 14:23:49 UTC
conflict-free setting would have significantly
higher levels of well-being than those living
in intact families characterized by high levels
of conflict. There was also evidence that in
some instances divorce may protect adoles-
cents from harmful and damaging family
interactions. For example, adolescents rated
family conflict as significantly more undesir-

able than divorce; it is potentially important
that fully 25 percent of the children experienc-
ing divorce defined it as a positive event.
Taken together, these results suggest that the
nature of family climates and conflicts may be
more crucial than household structure per se,
although these data also show that recent
divorce had a direct negative effect on
adolescents' depressed mood over time.
Hypotheses Three and Four were not
supported. Life events and the perceived
quality of relationships with parents did not
have significant main effects on adolescents'
well-being over time, and therefore could not
mediate the longitudinal effects of divorce
and family conflict. The absence of mediating
effects may be due to the high stability of
well-being in this sample over a one-year
period, and also may reflect the chronic
nature of much family conflict. This possibil-
ity may help to explain why a substantial
proportion of adolescents reported divorce to
be a positive experience.
It could also mean, however, that different
causal processes are operating. For example,
exploratory analyses revealed that adolescents
who were perceived by their parents as
disagreeable and negativistic elicited more
punishment from parents over time. In
addition, significant cross-sectional associa-
tions existed between punishment reported by
parents and parental interest perceived by the
adolescent, although parental punishment did
not affect perceived interest significantly over

time. Thus our longitudinal data provided
clear evidence about the relative effects of
family conflict and divorce on adolescents'
well-being, but did not yield unambiguous
findings regarding potential mediating pro-
cesses. This is an important area for further
research.
Like other large-scale community-based
studies, our results did not support the fifth
hypothesis-that divorce and family conflict
would affect boys and girls differently. In
addition, we found no evidence of different
effects for various age groups. More consis-
tent differences were found among racial and
cultural groups. Family conflict had signifi-
cantly stronger negative effects for Hispanics
on three measures of well-being than for
members of other ethnic groups. Hispanics
are more likely to have large extended
families characterized by strong relationships
(Keefe and Casas 1978). Such families can
provide much social support, but conflict in a
tightly knit extended family may be especially
stressful for adolescents who have not yet
developed independent support networks.
Other results showed that recent divorce
had significantly stronger negative effects for
Asian adolescents than for members of other
subgroups on three health outcomes. The
tendency for fewer Asian adolescents to
report earlier parental divorce or separation
may reflect the strong respect for the family
typical of this group (Wilkinson 1969). A

divorce or separation in such a family may be
particularly devastating and may contribute to
especially high levels of distress among
adolescents. Although the special vulnerabili-
ties of Hispanic and Asian adolescents to
family conflict and divorce respectively are
intriguing, possible sample biases lead us to
urge that these results be regarded as no more
than suggestive for further exploration.
In conclusion, these results help to illumi-
nate the relative effects of divorce and family
conflict on various dimensions of adolescents'
well-being over time. In addition, the finding
that divorce and family conflict have varying
relationships with conceptually and empiri-
cally different dimensions of well-being
suggests that diverse causal processes may be
operating, and that we may need to expand
our models of divorce and family conflict as
more evidence accumulates. The magnitude
of the significant coefficients reported here
was relatively modest, but we believe that
they are important in a practical sense,
because it may be possible to make parents
more aware of the negative effects of family
conflict on adolescents and to teach them
better ways of resolving such discord.
NOTES
1. The overall proportion of adolescents who
reported a divorce or a separation in this sample
(26%) is very similar to national estimates. The
National Center for Health Statistics (1987), for
example, estimated that in 1985, 26 percent of

all 16-year-olds had experienced the divorce of
their parents, as had 24 percent of 14-year-olds
2018 14:23:49 UTC
and 21 percent of 12-year-olds. Yet the
proportion of adolescents in this sample report-
ing divorce or separation in the past year (7%)
far exceeds the yearly rate of involvement in
divorce for any age cohort of adolescents. Our
data do not provide an explanation of this
anomaly, but we speculate that a reporting bias
may have been operating. If divorce and
separation are highly salient life events, adoles-
cents may underestimate the time interval since
the event and may report earlier divorces as
occurring in the past year.
2. A log-linear analysis showed that all three
partial associations among separation from a
parent or stepparent and the death or divorce of
a parent or stepparent were significant. When
parental death was controlled, adolescents
whose parents had divorced were significantly
more likely to be separated currently from at
least one parent than were those from intact
families (X2 = 320.41, df = 1, p < .001).
When divorce was controlled, adolescents who
reported the death of a parent were significantly

more likely to be separated currently from at
least one parent (X2 = 52.70, df = 1, p <
.001). Finally, when current separation from
parents was controlled, those who reported the
death of a parent were significantly less likely
to report parental divorce (X2 = 12.15, df = 1,
p < .001).
3. Correlations that are not presented in the text
are available from the authors.
4. This study examined four conceptually and
empirically distinct dimensions of adolescents'
well-being often studied in epidemiological
research, although few studies have examined
more than one of these dimensions simulta-
neously. Unfortunately we had available only
one scale each of anxiety, physical symptoms,
and self-esteem, and two scales of depressed
mood. With two waves of data, we could not
estimate measurement models for each scale
using procedures such as LISREL or two-stage
least squares; therefore we used OLS regression
to estimate longitudinal effect coefficients.
Consequently it is possible that autocorrelated
measurement errors may bias the OLS longitu-
dinal effect coefficients presented here. We
considered the alternative strategy of develop-
ing measurement models based on the individ-
ual items in each scale, but preliminary results
showed that the factor structures of all four
dependent measures were complex and would
require detailed discussion beyond the scope of
this paper. We also considered using the four

scales to construct a model of global well-being
and examining the extent to which adolescents
are high on all four component dimensions.
This approach, however, would address a
different research question.
5. Forty-five adolescents reported that their par-
ents divorced between Waves One and Two.
Divorce between waves was not associated
significantly with any dimension of well-being
measured in Wave Two. Family conflict
measured in Wave Two, however, was associ-
ated significantly with well-being measured in
Wave Two (depressed mood, r = .27; anxiety,
r = .25; self-esteem, r = -.17; physical
symptoms, r = .20). Also, Wave Two family
conflict was associated significantly with di-
vorce between waves (r = .11), but, surpris-
ingly, Wave One family conflict was not
associated significantly with divorce between
waves.
6. We also examined mean differences in well-
being in both waves for adolescents separated
from at least one parent or stepparent in
comparison with those who were not separated
from a parent or stepparent. Out of eight t-tests
between groups, only one was significant.
Adolescents living with fewer than two parents
or stepparents had significantly higher Wave
Two CESD scores than those living with two
parents or stepparents. These tests provided
further evidence that few differences existed
between groups.

APPENDIX
Items of Scales Created
for This Study
1. Adolescent Anxiety (a little, some, much, very
much)
In the past three months, how much have you
a. Felt nervous?
b. Felt frightened?
c. Felt tense or keyed up?
d. Felt restless or fidgety?
2. Adolescent Stressful Life Events in the Past
Year (yes, no)
a. Have there been big money worries where
you live, like not having enough money for
food, rent, clothes, heat, electricity, or the
phone?
b. Has anyone ever hurt you or threatened to
hurt you in a way that left you afraid for
some time?
c. Did any of your parents or stepparents lose
their job?
d. Did your family receive food stamps?
e. Did your family receive welfare?
f. Did your family move to a new home or
apartment?
g. Did you have a close friend move away?

h. Did you change schools?
3. Adolescent Perceptions of Parental Interest in
the Past Year (never, not very much, some, a
great deal; asked separately for each parent)
How much did your father (or stepfather) . . .
2018 14:23:49 UTC
a. Please you?
b. Show you he likes you?
c. Show interest in you as a person?
d. Talk about schoolwork with you?
e. Tell you when you did something well?
f. Listen to your ideas and opinions?
g. Talk to you at mealtime?
h. Love you?
i. Spend time with you when you needed him?
4. Adolescent Perceptions of Parental Punishment
in the Past Year (never, not very much, some,
great deal; asked separately for each parent or
stepparent)
How much did your father (or stepfather) ...
a. Stop talking to you when he was angry with
you?
b. Yell or shout at you?
c. Make you feel guilty when you did some-

thing wrong?
d. Threaten you when you did something
wrong?
e. Hit you when you did something wrong?
5. Parental Perceptions of Disagreement with
Adolescent (never, rarely, sometimes, often,
very often)
During the last 6 months, how often have you
and (child) disagreed about...
a. Doing homework?
b. How well he/she is doing with schoolwork?
c. Doing chores and jobs around the house?
d. Giving you enough respect?
e. Letting you know where he/she is when
he/she is out late?
f. Coming home on time?
g. Getting along with other family members?
6. Parental Perceptions of Adolescent Behavior
Problems (never, rarely, sometimes, often,
very often)
How often . . .
a. Does your child show an uncontrollable
temper, for example, behavior like scream-
ing, swearing, loss of control, angry out-
bursts, throwing things, or breaking things?
b. Is your child irritable?
c. Does your child do the opposite of what is
asked of him/her?

d. Does your child disagree or quarrel with
people for no apparent reason?
7. Parental Perceptions of Adolescent Distress
(never, rarely, sometimes, often, very often)
During the last three months how often has
he/she .
a. Shown signs of loneliness?
b. Shown signs of nervousness?
c. Seemed depressed or blue?
d. Been cheerful?
e. Seemed to have guilt feelings?
f. Had crying spells?
g. Spent a lot of time alone?
h. Had a poor appetite?
i. Been enthusiastic?
j. Had trouble sleeping?
k. Had the energy he/she needed?
1. Been so restless that he/she couldn't sit in a
chair very long?
m. Seemed to enjoy life?
n. Acted as though he/she just couldn't get
going?
o. Had aches and pains?
p. Disliked school?
q. Spent time with friends?
r. Done his/her homework?
s. Gotten into fights with people outside the
family?
REFERENCES

Dancy, Barbara L., and Paul J. Handal. 1984.
"Perceived Family Climate, Psychological Ad-
justment, and Peer Relationships of Black
Adolescents: A Function of Parental Marital
Status or Perceived Family Conflict?" Journal
of Community Psychology 12:222-29.
Emery, Robert E. 1982. "Interparental Conflict
and the Children of Discord and Divorce."
Psychological Bulletin 92:310-30.
Emery, Robert E., and K. Daniel O'Leary. 1982.
"Children's Perceptions of Marital Discord and
Behavior Problems of Boys and Girls." Journal
of Abnormal Child Psychology 10: 11-24.
Enos, Diane M., and Paul J. Handal. 1986. "The
Relationship of Parental Marital Status and
Perceived Family Conflict to Adjustment in
White Adolescents." Journal of Consulting and
Clinical Psychology 54:820-24.
Furstenberg, Frank F., James L. Peterson, Christine
W. Nord, and Nicholas Zill. 1983. "The Life
Course of Children of Divorce: Martial Disrup-
tion and Parental Contact." American Sociolog-
ical Review 48:656-67.
Guidubaldi, John, and Joseph D. Perry. 1985.
"Divorce and Mental Health Sequelae for
Children: A Two-Year Follow-Up of a Nation-
wide Sample." Journal of the American Acad-
emy of Child Psychiatry 24:531-37.
Hess, Robert D., and Kathleen A. Camara. 1979.

"Post-Divorce Family Relationships as Mediat-
ing Factors in the Consequences of Divorce for
Children." Journal of Social Issues 35:79-96.
Hetherington, E. Mavis. 1979. "Divorce: A
Child's Perspective." American Psychologist
34:851-58.
Hetherington, E. Mavis, Martha Cox, and Roger
Cox. 1978. "The Aftermath of Divorce." Pp.
149-76 in Mother-Child, Father-Child Relation-
ships, edited by M. Matthews. Washington, DC:
National Association for the Education of Young
Children.
. 1979. "Family Interaction and the Social,
Emotional and Cognitive Development of Chil-
dren Following Divorce. " Pp. 71-87 in The
Family: Setting Priorities, edited by V. Vaugh
2018 14:23:49 UTC
and T. Brazelton. New York: Science and
Medicine.
. 1981. "Effects of Divorce on Parents and
Children." Pp. 233-88 in Nontraditional Fami-
lies, edited by M. Lamb. Hillsdale, NJ:
Erlbaum.

. 1985. "Long-Term Effects of Divorce and
Remarriage on the Adjustment of Children."
Journal of the American Academy of Child
Psychiatry 24:518-30.
Keefe, Susan E., and Jesus M. Casas. 1978.
"Family and Mental Health among Mexican
Americans: Some Consideration for Mental
Health Services." Pp. 1-24 in Family and
Mental Health in the Mexican American Com-
munity, edited by Jesus M. Casas and Susan E.
Keefe. Los Angeles: Spanish-Speaking Mental
Health Research Center, University of Califor-
nia.
McCord, Joan, William McCord, and Emily
Thurbur. 1962. "Some Effects of Paternal
Absence on Male Children." Journal of Abnor-
mal Psychology 64:361-69.
Mechanic, David. 1979. "Development of Psycho-
logical Distress among Young Adults." Ar-
chives of General Psychiatry 36:1233-39.
. 1980. "The Experience and Reporting of
Common Physical Complaints." Journal of
Health and Social Behavior 21:146-55.
National Center for Health Statistics. 1987.
Monthly Vital Statistics Report 36, 8, Supple-
ment. Hyattsville, MD: Public Health Service.
Peterson, James L., and Nicholas Zill. 1986.
"Marital Disruption, Parent-Child Relation-
ships, and Behavior Problems in Children."
Journal of Marriage and.ane Family 48:295-307.

Porter, Beatrice, and K. Daniel O'Leary. 1980.
"Marital Discord and Childhood Behavior Prob-
lems." Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology
8:287-95.
Radloff, Lenore S. 1977. "The CESD Scale: A
Self-Report Depression Scale for Research in the
General Population." Applied Psychological
Measurement 1:385-401.
Rickel, Annette U., and Thomas S. Langner.
1985. "Short- and Long-Term Effects of Marital
Disruption on Children." American Journal of
Community Psychology 13:599-611.
Rosenberg, Morris. 1965. Society and the Adoles-
cent Self-Image. Princeton: Princeton University
Press.
. 1979. Conceiving the Self. New York:
Basic Books.
Rutter, Michael. 1971. "Parent-Child Separation:
Psychological Effects on the Children." Journal
of Child Psychology and Psychiatry and Allied
Disciplines 12:233-60.
. 1979. "Maternal Deprivation, 1972-1978:
New Findings, New Concepts, New Ap-
proaches." Child Development 50:283-305.
Schoenbach, Victor J., Berton H. Kaplan, Edward
H. Wagner, Roger C. Grimson, and Francis T.
Miller. 1983. "Prevalence of Self-Reported
Depressive Symptoms in Young Adolescents."

American Journal of Public Health 73:1281-87.
Shaw, Daniel S., and Robert E. Emery. 1987.
"Parental Conflict and Other Correlates of the
Adjustment of School-Age Children Whose
Parents Have Separated." Journal of Abnormal
Child Psychology 15:269-81.
Slater, Elisa J., and Joel D. Haber. 1984.
"Adolescent Adjustment Following Divorce as a
Function of Familial Conflict." Journal of
Consulting and Clinical Psychology 52:920-21.
Slater, Elisa J., Krista J. Stewart, and Margaret W.
Linn. 1983. "The Effects of Family Disruption
on Adolescent Males and Females." Adoles-
cence 8:931-42.
Wallerstein, Judith S. 1985a. "Children of Di-
vorce: Preliminary Report of a Ten-Year Follow-
Up of Older Children and Adolescents." Journal
of the American Academy of Child Psychiatry
24:545-53.
. 1985b. "Children of Divorce: Recent
Research-Introduction." Journal of the Ameri-
can Academy of Child Psychiatry Special Issue:
515-17.
Wallerstein, Judith S., and Joan B. Kelly. 1980.
Surviving the Breakup: How Children and
Parents Cope with Divorce. New York: Basic
Books.
Wilkinson, Thomas 0. 1969. "Family Structure
and Industrialization in Japan." Pp. 98-101 in

Marriage and the Family: A Comprehensive
Reader, edited by Jeffrey K. Hadden and Marie
L. Borgatta. Itasca, IL: Peacock.
DAVID MECHANIC, is University Professor, the Rene' Dubos
Professor of Behavioral Sciences, and
the Director of the Institute for Health, Health Care Policy, and
Aging Research at Rutgers University.
STEPHEN HANSELL, Associate Professor in the Department
of Sociology and the Institute for Health,
Health Care Policy, and Aging Research at Rutgers University,
is interested in the social psychology of
illness behavior. His recent studies involve adolescents, elderly
members of an HMO, and persons with
AIDS.
2018 14:23:49 UTC
Contentsp. 105p. 106p. 107p. 108p. 109p. 110p. 111p. 112p.
113p. 114p. 115p. 116Issue Table of ContentsJournal of Health
and Social Behavior, Vol. 30, No. 1 (Mar., 1989) pp. i-vi+1-
146Front Matter [pp.
]þÿ�þ�ÿ��E��d��i��t��o��r��i��a��
�l��:�� Y��e��a��r��
��2��0��2��4��A��n��
��I��r��o��n��i��c��a��l��
��V��i��e��w�� o��f��
��S��o��c��i��o��L��i��z��a��
��a��n��d�� W��h��a��t��
��L��e��d�� t��o��
��I��t��/��J��o��u��r��n��a��l
�� S��t��a��f��f��
��C��h��a��n��g��e��s��
��[��p��p��.�� ]Caregiving, Ethical and

Informal: Emerging Challenges in the Sociology of Health and
Illness [pp. 1-10]Psychiatric Diagnosis as Reified Measurement
[pp. 11-25]Psychiatric Diagnostic Categories: Issues of Validity
and Measurement: An Invited Comment on Mirowsky and Ross
(1989) [pp. 26-32]In Response to "Psychiatric Diagnosis as
Reified Measurement": An Invited Comment on Mirowsky and
Ross (1989) [pp. 33-34]A More Balanced Perspective on
"Psychiatric Diagnosis as Reified Measurement": An Invited
Comment on Mirowsky and Ross [pp. 35-37]Rejoinder--
Assessing the Type and Severity of Psychological Problems: An
Alternative to Diagnosis
[pp. 38-40]An Appraisal of Organizational Response to Fiscally
Constraining Regulation: The Case of Hospitals and DRGs [pp.
41-55]Fertility and Fertility-Related Behavior Among Mexican-
American and Non-Hispanic White Female Adolescents [pp. 56-
76]The Effects of Women's Employment: Personal Control and
Sex Differences in Mental Health [pp. 77-91]Divine Relations,
Social Relations, and Well-Being [pp. 92-104]Divorce, Family
Conflict, and Adolescents' Well-Being [pp. 105-116]Sex
Differences in Psychosocial Consequences of Alcohol and Drug
Abuse [pp. 117-130]Race, Socioeconomic Status, and
Psychological Distress: An Examination of Differential
Vulnerability [pp. 131-146]Back Matter [pp. ]

Divorce, Family Conflict, and Adolescents Well-BeingAu.docx

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

Similar to Divorce, Family Conflict, and Adolescents Well-BeingAu.docx

Similar to Divorce, Family Conflict, and Adolescents Well-BeingAu.docx (20)

More from aryan532920

More from aryan532920 (20)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

Divorce, Family Conflict, and Adolescents Well-BeingAu.docx