8 Risk and Resilience in Adolescence
In this chapter, we are focusing on resilience in adolescents, as a way of drawing together the various themes discussed in this volume. We will also discuss the importance of parenting and its interaction with the temperament of the child in predicting positive outcomes for adolescents. We will begin by defining resilience and then discuss first individual factors and later family factors that are related to resilience. Although our primary focus in this book is on family factors, it is also necessary to acknowledge that individual factors such as gender, temperament, and attachment security play a role in the development and maintenance of resilience, and may also affect interactions with other family members and the quality of those relationships. Some of these individual factors will, of course, be genetic and some will be the result of early experiences in the family. Others will be the result of the interweaving of nature and nurture (Smart & Sanson, 2005). It is important to acknowledge that both individual or temperament factors and family factors are crucial to adolescent development.
8.1 Characteristics of Resilience
Resilience, which has become something of a ‘buzz’ word in the area of child and adolescent development, is defined as the ability of individuals “to adapt better than expected in the face of significant adversity or risk” (Tusaie, Puskar & Sereika, 2007, p.54), or as positive adaptation in the context of adversity (Luthar, Cicchetti & Becker, 2000). A third definition has been proposed by Branden-Muller and her colleagues (Branden-Muller, Haggerty, Sherrod, Garmezy & Rutter, 1996): the ability to function unimpaired despite exposure to adverse circumstances. In other words, resilience is about being able to ‘bounce back’ from such negative life-events as serious illness, accident, separation or divorce of parents and other potentially stressful events. Hjemdal (2007) pointed out the increase in research on resilience in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. He saw this focus as being motivated by the possibility of identifying the kinds of protective factors likely to prevent young people from experiencing negative outcomes in terms of their mental health when adversity strikes.
Luthar et al. (2000) emphasize that resilience should be seen as multidimensional and as a process, rather than as a permanent characteristic of a person, although we would expect that some adolescents are likely to be more resilient overall than others, whatever the challenges they are facing. Conceptualizing resilience as a process allows for different levels of resilience at different developmental stages and different developmental transitions (Cicchetti & Garmezy, 1993; Masten, 2004; Silk, Vanderbilt-Adrience, Shaw, Forbes, Whalen, Ryan & Dahl, 2007). In other words, individuals may not always have the same level of resilience at different times in their lives and when facing different transitions. According to Cicchetti and Garmezy (1993) “new vulnerabilities and/or strengths may emerge during developmental transitions throughout the life course as well as during periods of acute stress” (p.499).
It is also important that resilience is not dichotomized (that is, seen as just the absence or presence of particular factors; Kassis et al., 2013; Masten, 2001). Kassis et al. actually assessed their sample using three levels of resilience (resilient, near resilient and non-resilient). These researchers found that, overall, resilience was strongly linked to individuals’ personal characteristics and the quality of their relationships as well as to the lack of exposure to violence in their families. In general, three resilience factors are focused on: (1) individual resources or characteristics, (2) family support and (3) support from social networks beyond the family (Carlton et al., 2006; Hjemdahl et al., 2007; Skrove, Romundstad & Indredavik, 2012).
Ungar (2008) also argues that resilience is not just a characteristic of an individual child but is affected by a child’s social and political environment and is a product of the protective factors present in that environment, but also of the vulnerabilities. Ungar carried out a study of resilience in 1500 young people spread across 14 sites and five continents. They concluded that there are some global aspects of adolescents’ lives that contribute to resilience but also cultural and contextual factors such as societal understandings of what constitutes healthy functioning. Studies on resilience have tended to assume that resilience and health are defined similarly around the world, without any comparisons with nonwestern cultures. The studies reported below tend to focus on a view of resilience as a characteristic of an individual that is helped by living in a favourable environment, although there are exceptions.
Fu, Leoutsakos and Underwood (2013) studied resilience following a severe earthquake in Sichuan in China in 2008. Although they found that the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale was applicable to Chinese adolescents, they also argued for the recognition of cultural differences in how resilience is displayed. In a study following the Haitian earthquake of 2010, a Creole version of the Resilience Scale was also found to be valid and reliable in assessing the resilience of child and adolescent survivors (Cenat & Derivois, 2013).
In order to be categorized as resilient in western culture, adolescents should meet two criteria: First, they must be considered vulnerable or at high risk of adverse events (conflict or violence in the family, accident or illness, failure at school) and second, they need to display more adaptable responses to adverse events than other adolescents (Masten & Coatsworth, 1998; Tusaie et al., 2007). In other words, resilient adolescents are better able to cope with adverse circumstances and less likely to experience subsequent ill effects such as depression or anxiety, or become involved in problem behaviours such as drug abuse.
Cicchietti and Garmezy (1993) emphasize the need for caution, in that children and adolescents who have not been exposed to trauma should not be considered resilient. Sometimes people assume that all children and adolescents are equally resilient and will always ‘bounce back’ easily from trauma, but there is little evidence to support such an assumption. In fact there is much evidence that children and adolescents can be deeply and significantly affected by trauma (e.g., van der Kolk, 2005).
Understanding what contributes to resilience for adolescents is important for parents so that they can assist their children to be more resilient and thus increase the likelihood of positive outcomes for them (Bumpas, 2004). Such an understanding is also important for practitioners who want to increase resilience in their young clients. Although individual characteristics such as optimism and self-esteem are clearly important (Seligman, 1991), families also play a crucial role in assisting young people to develop and enhance their ability to cope and adapt to life’s challenges. We will return to this issue later in this chapter.
Having good connections with appropriate adults is crucial to resilience (Howard & Johnson, 2001). Young people whose parents are responsive to them, involved in their lives and offer guidance when necessary are more likely to develop resilience (Condly, 2006; Howard & Johnson). A resiliency approach increases our understanding of why some young people who face adverse circumstances do not experience the negative outcomes that typically are associated with those circumstances (Luthar et al., 2000; Mistry, McCarthy, Yancey Yao & Minal, 2009).
8.2 Characteristics of Resilient Adolescents
Masten and her colleagues (Masten, et al., 1999) focused on the question of how resilient adolescents differ from their peers who have failed to do well when dealing with difficulties, and those who have done well but have not faced any difficulties. These researchers assessed “cumulative exposure to psychosocial adversity” as a threat to normal development; success in adapting was defined as displaying competence in the relevant developmental tasks, and the presence and extent of psychosocial resources were seen as likely to lead to resilient behaviour by working to counteract the potential effects of adversity.
Competence in the Masten et al. (1999) study was assessed in terms of academic achievement, prosocial behaviour and social competence with peers, and was assessed in childhood and adolescence using multiple methods and informants. The resources assessed were intelligence and the quality of parenting the young person received. Assessment of parenting quality included measures of warmth, expectations and family structure. Participants were initially recruited from schools and ranged in age from 8 years to 12 years (Grades 3 to 6); their parents also completed some questionnaires. When the young people were reassessed after 10 years (when they ranged in age from 17 to 23 years) parents were interviewed at home.
Masten et al. (1999) carried out a number of analyses, including both variable-centred and person-centred analyses to determine the links between the variables as measured in childhood and those measured in late adolescence and young adulthood. Those who experienced quality parenting and had higher intelligence, tended to do well on competence measures across the three domains, even when they were subject to severe and even chronic adversity, suggesting that having quality resources led to resilience even when the amount of adversity experienced was high. Further, having a high level of resources (high IQ and quality parenting) seemed to be particularly protective with regard to conduct; in other words, these individuals tended to behave in prosocial ways. As we will discuss later, many studies such as this one do not take adolescent temperament into account although there is evidence that the quality of the parenting may be affected by the temperament of the adolescent.
In further support of the concept of resilience, individuals who experienced high levels of adversity but were still assessed as adequate in terms of competence (classified as resilient), were quite similar to those competent individuals who experienced little adversity. They were very different, however, from the maladaptive group who experienced high levels of adversity and were assessed as low in competence, and low in resources. These young people were also high in negative emotionality. These authors concluded that the quality of resources available to young people is very important because these resources “are markers of fundamental adaptational systems that protect child development in the context of severe adversity” (Masten et al., 1999, p.143).
8.3 Resilience and Mental Illness
One of the most interesting studies of resilience in adolescents and its implications for the futures of those young people comes from the longitudinal study by psychiatrist, Stuart Hauser and his colleagues mentioned in Chapter 2. These researchers were able to use longitudinal data to understand the consequences of experiencing severe psychiatric disorders in early adolescence (by 14 years of age). Hauser and Allen (2006) studied a sample of nine competent young adults from the psychiatric sample who had previously experienced a great deal of adversity, particularly in middle adolescence (13 to 16 years). These young people were functioning at a level above the average, even of the normative sample (Boston High School students). The researchers had records of earlier clinical interviews as well as attachment interviews, and were able to analyse the themes of these interviews.
The key themes reported by these highly resilient young people included agency (ability to take responsibility for one’s own life), reflectiveness (ability to think carefully about issues that arise), and relationship recruiting (being able to form new relationships). These abilities clearly differentiated these young people from those who were also former patients but were still struggling. The researchers also noted three other factors that seemed to characterize these resilient young people: the drive to mastery (similar to the drive to autonomy), a high level of fascination with internal processes (especially their own thought processes), and a desire to connect with others and form relationships. These latter three variables would seem to be strongly related to the set mentioned first (that is, agency, reflectiveness and relationship recruiting).
In another study of resilience and mental illness (Skrove et al., 2012), a large sample of adolescents was assessed in terms of symptoms of anxiety, depression and substance abuse, social competence, resilience and family cohesion. Characteristics associated with resilience such as having positive relationships with their parents and having a lot of friends were shown to protect against developing anxiety and depression. Being involved in substance use and neglecting physical activity increased these symptoms. Resilience factors tended to attenuate the link between engaging in an unhealthy lifestyle and symptoms of mental illness.
8.4 Individual Factors and Resilience
According to research, about a third of any population, including adolescents, are likely to be highly resilient (Hauser, 1999; Resnick, 2000). There is also evidence of some age and gender differences in resilience. In addition, as Branden-Muller and colleagues (1996) emphasize, there are both inter-individual and intra-individual differences in the factors that contribute to resilience or the lack thereof. A number of studies have explored the protective factors seen as likely to increase resilience in adolescents, and those that are likely to have a negative effect on the development of resilience (Chang, 2001; Geanellos, 2005; Skrove et al., 2012; Smart, Hayes, Sanson & Toumbourou, 2007; Tusaie et al., 2007; Werner & Smith, 1992).
In one study, a higher percentage of males than females reported medium or high levels of resilience and a higher percentage of females reported low levels of resilience (Tusaie et al., 2007). Also, younger male adolescents who were highly optimistic in their attitudes to life, and who perceived support from family members as strong, tended to show higher levels of resilience, particularly if they experienced few adverse events. In addition, male adolescents who were older, who were highly optimistic and who saw family members and friends as supportive showed high levels of resilience. Optimism was the strongest individual factor predicting resilience in this study, supporting the importance of attitudes and thinking patterns to resilience.
This relation between optimism and resilience is also supported in a different study, where adolescents who saw the prospects for their futures in a positive light were more able to deal successfully with negative events when they occurred than those who saw their futures in a negative light. In addition, the young people who were more optimistic were able to get on with their lives more effectively despite setbacks (Carver & Scheier, 1998).
Other protective factors identified also involved attitudes and thinking abilities such as problem-solving abilities and an ability to reframe an adverse event in a positive way as well as being able to ask for support from others when needed. Imagine an adolescent who has failed an exam and is very disappointed. A positive reframe would involve saying something like, “Well, I know now that I need to spend more time on that subject before the finals”. A negative approach, on the other hand, would involve claiming, “I’ll never understand this stuff, I think I’ll just give up”. The resilient adolescent is much more likely to adopt the positive reframe and get on with life.
In the study conducted by Tusaie and her colleagues (2007), bad life events tended to have a negative impact on resilience, whereas optimism was positively linked to resilience. In other words, resilient young people tend to see ‘the glass as half-full rather than half-empty’. Perceiving family members as highly supportive was the second most important factor in this study. Perceived support from the peer group was particularly important for older adolescents, who generally spend more time with members of their peer group than they do with family members.
Environmental factors that promote the development of resilience in individuals include not having to cope with a lot of negative life-events and experiencing at least some successes in one’s life. According to Bernard (2004) the key factors that promote resilience in disadvantaged children are caring relationships, high expectations and opportunities to contribute to family and society. Self-efficacy, or believing one can have an influence on events in one’s life, is also important (Bandura, 2004). Young people who believe that they have no choice about what happens to them, or who feel stuck in circumstances they see as beyond their control are more likely to lack resilience. To go back to the earlier example about failing an exam, an adolescent who is high in self-efficacy would not give up but would believe that they could do better if they put in the extra work. As Bernard suggests, family support and environment are critical to the development of adolescents’ resilience.
8.5 Family Factors in Resilience
As we have pointed out in earlier chapters in this book, healthy family environments involve a number of factors that are protective for adolescents. These factors include (1) secure attachments to parents, (2) an emotionally warm atmosphere in the family, (3) open communication between parents and offspring, (4) the provision of encouragement and support for the adolescents, and (5) adequate rules and supervision when needed (see also Chapter 3). Here we will discuss these factors in terms of their links to the development of resilience in young people.
8.5.1 Secure Attachment
Hauser and his colleagues (Allen & Hauser, 1996; Allen, Hauser & Borman-Spurrell, 1996; Hauser, 1999) have argued that secure attachment in adolescence is a marker of resilience. Hauser and Allen (2006) have also claimed that the individual, environmental and social factors most causally linked to resilience actually promote secure bidirectional attachment relationships. Thus there seems to be a reciprocal relationship between attachment and resilience, such that secure attachment increases the likelihood that an adolescent will be resilient and resilient children will be more likely than other children to be secure in attachment. Hauser and Allen (2006) also have argued that attachment is crucial to understanding the development of resilience. In addition Luthar and her colleagues (Luthar, Cicchetti & Becker, 2000) emphasize the link between the development of resilience and the quality of family relationships, a factor also critical to the development of secure attachment. In fact, Atwool (2006) using a sample from the Maori population in New Zealand argues that the concepts of attachment and resilience should be regarded as complementary. She sees secure attachment as crucial to “minimizing risk and maximizing resiliency” (p.315) particularly for young people involved in the child protection system.
8.5.2 An Emotionally Warm Atmosphere
As we have noted earlier, the quality of the parents’ relationship is central to the functioning of the family and to the quality of care that is provided for young people (Erel & Burman, 1995; Skrove et al, 2012)). The effect of marital or relationship quality on adolescents is primarily through the parenting styles that parents use in raising their children. Those with satisfying couple relationships are more likely to be warm and accepting with their children and less likely to be rejecting (Aluja et al., 2007). In addition, parents in satisfying relationships are more likely to model harmonious interactions for their young people.
8.5.3 Open Communication
Parents’ knowledge of their adolescents’ activities and communication about those activities is associated with adaptive behaviour by the adolesents. Parents’ and adolescents’ communication about risky behaviours can serve as a protective factor for adolescents (e.g., Guilamo-Ramos et al., 2006). When adolescents believe that their parents trust them, they are more likely to have discussions with their parents about their plans and disclose information to them about the activities in which they are involved (Kerr & Stattin, 2000; Kerr et al., 1999). Parents can then discuss appropriate rules with their adolescents as well as the need for supervision (see later section on supervision). (see also Chapter 3)
8.5.4 Provision of Encouragement and Support
According to Sroufe et al. (2005), adolescents need parents who are able to provide them with support and help when needed. These authors see adolescents’ capacity for intimacy as stemming from both early parent-child relationships and the care provided to the young child, as well as to the ongoing support they receive from their parents. Adolescents who enjoy good relationships with parents are more likely to have good relationships with their peers (Steinberg, 2005) and the quality of adolescents’ relationships with parents and peers influences the quality of their romantic relationships (Brown, 2004). Most parents want to have good relationships with their children and want them to form positive lasting relationships with others.
Supportive families tend to include warm and responsive parents who get on well with one another, and at least one parent who has a close relationship with the adolescent (Masten, 2004; Mykestad, Roysamb & Tambs, 2012; Silk et al., 2007). Where the adolescent does not have a supportive relationship with at least one parent, a supportive relationship with an adult outside the nuclear family can provide the necessary care. An aunt or uncle, a grandparent or a trusted family friend could take on this role. Alternatively, a youth group leader, school counsellor, or religious or cultural leader could provide the kind of listening ear needed by a young person. In addition, some countries such as Australia have telephone counselling services particularly set up for young people for those times when they are unable or unwilling to share their problems with family members or close friends.
8.5.5 Adequate Rules and Supervision
Another important attribute of parents that is likely to be protective for adolescents is parents being willing to apply strict rules about risky behaviours such as the abuse of alcohol or drugs and expect adolescents to keep those rules. When parents do apply rules confidently, alcohol use, for example, tends to be lower (Van der Vorst et al., 2005). The problem, as we noted in Chapter 6, is that parents often feel powerless in trying to control their adolescents’ risky behaviours such as drinking alcohol, smoking and involvement in drug abuse (Taylor & Carroll, 2001).
8.5.6 Sex Differences in Resilience
Using an Australian sample, Sun and Stewart (2007) found strong sex differences in reports of resilience and the protective factors associated with resilience. Female students tended to report stronger and more positive social relationships than their male counterparts, including relationships with peers both at school and outside of school, and relationships with parents, teachers and other adults. Females also reported higher levels of communication than males, more empathy for the situations of others and a greater willingness to seek help. They also had clearer goals for the future than their male peers. There was some evidence in this study for changes over time with scores for girls in Grade 7 on these protective factors declining sharply, perhaps because of the transition to high school in some states in Australia.
Those adolescents who became less tense and anxious over time tended to have better relationships with peers, fewer behaviour problems, better social skills and were likely to be doing better at school. Parents of these young people tended to report that they had fewer problems in their relationships with their children than did those whose symptoms increased over time (Letcher, Smart, Sanson & Toumbourou, 2009). Parents of girls whose internalizing symptoms were decreasing, reported that their daughters were less shy and more outgoing, and were less negative and more emotionally stable. Teachers of 11-year-old males whose internalizing symptoms were decreasing, reported that they were less aggressive, had more effective social skills, better relationships with peers and were doing better academically.
Thus Letcher et al’s (2009) comprehensive study confirmed that both individual factors such as temperament, as well as relationship experiences when the young people were infants and toddlers, all contribute to internalizing problems throughout childhood and adolescence. The fact that problems can be identified so early suggests the importance of early parenting. Perhaps societies should be doing more to help parents cope with the responsibilities of early parenting and help them learn the importance of warmth and responsiveness in the treatment of children of all ages. In fact, the importance of early parenting is confirmed by neuroscientists who have shown that social experiences such as those with parents can “alter the organizations of neural systems, particularly when they occur during sensitive periods of heightened brain plasticity” (Silk et al., 2007, p.843). These neural systems seem to be affected by both negative and positive influences from the parent-child relationship (Cacioppo, Berntson, Sheridan & McClintock, 2000; Essex, Klein, Cho & Kalin, 2002).
8.6 Resilience and Emotion Regulation
The ability to regulate emotion is seen as a crucial skill in the development of resilience (Silk et al., 2007). These authors see parents as having the potential to help their adolescents develop resilience against depression by teaching them skills for managing their emotions in an adaptive and flexible way. In fact, van der Kolk (2005) argues that teaching emotion regulation is the single most important task of parenting. There is considerable evidence that how individuals think about themselves and their world can increase or decrease their tendency to be depressed or contented.
Parents can help adolescents and children develop skills and strategies for managing emotions in at least three ways (Morris, Silk, Steinberg, Myers & Robinson, 2007). First, children and adolescents learn through observation of the ways their parents manage their own emotions (Denham, Mitchell-Copeland, Strandberg, Auerbach & Blair, 1997). For example, if parents manage emotions using violence or abuse, their offspring are likely to develop similar patterns, whereas if parents are able to maintain positive affect in challenging situations their children are likely to be better at understanding emotions and emotional behaviour both in themselves and others.
Second, where parents are able to respond to their children’s emotional expression appropriately, children seem to increase their understanding of emotions. Relevant here is the attunement cycle in infancy that is a way of describing the processes that occur between an infant and caregiver (Cozolino, 2006). For example, an infant cries in distress, the mother feeds the infant and the infant becomes calm. This process gradually teaches the child that emotions can be managed and the child begins to do this in increasingly autonomous ways (e.g., a toddler may ask for a drink or a sandwich). With older children and adolescents, parents may calm their distress by talking things over with them. In this way, they are becoming increasingly skilled at regulating their own emotions. Discouragement of a child’s expression of emotion, on the other hand, is likely to impede their understanding of how emotions work. Common sayings such as “Big boys don’t cry” or “Don’t you dare get angry with me” can confuse children because of the disjunction between what they know they are feeling and what they are allowed to express.
Third, how parents actively teach their children about the appropriateness of emotional expression has an impact on their emotional and social competence. Although Denham et al. (1997) found that language aimed at guiding and socializing children in terms of controlling their emotions was associated with less emotional competence, they suggest that where parents are consistently able to provide prosocial reactions to children’s distress, the children may benefit in terms of their emotional understanding and competence. The important point from our perspective is that those children with good emotional understanding are more likely than those with poor emotional understanding to become well-functioning adolescents (Smart et al., 2007).
There is also evidence of the interplay between physiological characteristics and a person’s social environment, particularly in relation to resilience among adolescents who are at risk for depression (Cicchetti & Toth, 1998; Silk et al., 2007). For example, neural systems in the brain that affect how adolescents react to stress and to highly emotional situations tend to be affected by their social relationships, particularly those with parents (Essex et al., 2002). It seems that the social environment has an impact on the response of the brain to emotional stimuli (Hooley, Gruber, Scott, Hiller & Yurgelun-Todd, 2005). This effect may be particularly important in adolescence, given the evidence of the continued plasticity of the frontal lobe region of the brain that is implicated in the regulation of emotion at this stage of life (Casey, Giedd, & Thomas, 2000; Giedd, 2004; Silk et al., 2007).
8.7 Resilience Against Depression
As we have noted earlier, resilience involves experiencing a relatively good outcome despite having to deal with difficult situations that are likely to increase the risk of developing psychopathology such as depression (Hjemdal et al. 2007; Kassis et al, 2013; Luthar et al., 2006; Skrove et al., 2012). Protective factors against depression include the positive resources of the individual such as easy temperament, high self-esteem and secure attachment. In addition, being part of a stable and supportive family environment and having supportive networks outside the family such as peers and other adults who provide positive models of coping are also important. Adolescents reporting higher levels of resilience tended to report lower levels of depression, irrespective of which aspect of resilience was being assessed. It is interesting to note, from the perspective of this book with its focus on family relationships, that family cohesion, along with social resources, were important predictors of low levels of depression. In other words, the young person’s social environment is critical in protecting them against the risk of developing depression.
8.8 Self-esteem, Resilience and Protection from Risky Behaviour
One study explored the links among self-esteem, resilience and tobacco and cannabis use in a sample of adolescents from Slovakia (Veselska, Geckova, Orosova, Gajdosova, van Dijk & Reijneveld (2009). Findings were quite complex, with some aspects of resilience decreasing the chances of an adolescent smoking or using cannabis and other aspects increasing the chances of engaging in these risky behaviours. Family cohesion seemed particularly important in protecting a young person from smoking or using cannabis. Wong (2008) also showed that the resilience factors of parental involvement and autonomy support, along with greater self-regulation, increased the chances of better academic performance and decreased the probability of adolescents being involved in substance abuse. It almost seems paradoxical that adolescents who are encouraged to make their own decisions would be less likely to get involved in destructive behaviours, but perhaps adolescents who are encouraged to be autonomous respond to the trust their parents are placing in them with responsible behaviour. Alternatively, parents may only support autonomous decision-making in young people who have already shown that they are trustworthy.
Adolescents who have the kinds of relationships with parents and other adults that promote resilience are also less likely to engage in behaviours that are risky for their health: smoking, using alcohol, being physically inactive and unhealthy eating (defined as eating few serves of fruit and vegetables; Mistry, McCarthy, Yancey, Lu & Patel, 2009). These researchers found that those adolescents who had greater parental supervision were more likely to engage in health-promoting behaviours than were those who had little supervision from parents. For females, having a positive role model increased their chances of not engaging in behaviours that put their health at risk.
8.9 The Importance of the Family Environment
From the large amount of research that we have reviewed in this book it is apparent that the most critical factor in the lives of adolescents is the family environment in which they are developing. There are a number of aspects of a supportive family environment that facilitate positive adolescent development. Firstly, open communication between parents and adolescents, where adolescents can express their views and discuss these views with their parents without fear of criticism or ridicule, is vital. Secondly, it is important for their positive development that the relationships between parents and adolescents are warm and accepting. Thirdly parents need to support their young people in their growing independence and autonomy while at the same time having clear expectations for responsible behaviour.
There is also evidence that young people tend to do better when they are involved in organized activities outside of school such as team sports, youth groups, scouts and guides, choirs or bands. Parents who get their children involved in these activities are promoting resilience, although it is possible to overcrowd children’s lives with activities so that they don’t have time to just live. Too much of any good thing can create problems.
Despite all the apprehensions that parents may have about raising their adolescents, apprehensions that are based on negative stereotypes of young people in our culture, there is no need for adolescence to be a time of high levels of conflict and wayward behaviour. Of course, there is likely to be some conflict between parents and adolescents, given that one task of adolescence is to push the boundaries set by parents in order to develop independent thought and action. It is important to keep in mind, however, that most adolescents enjoy positive family relationships and rely on their families for crucial support as they negotiate their transitions towards adulthood.
8.10 African-American Youth: A Case Study
Because many African-American adolescents suffer from chronic disadvantage, including disadvantages in education, health and socio-economic status, they are an important group for studying resilience (Barrow, Armstrong, Vargo & Boothroyd, 2007). These authors discuss both risk and protective factors affecting this group of young people at three levels, (1) individual, (2) family, school and community, and (3) social structures.
At the individual level, the development of a strong ethnic identity as an African-American with all that entails has been found to protect African-American young people against the problems of substance abuse, racial discrimination, and daily hassles related to poverty, crowded conditions, poor neighbourhoods and other factors. A strong ethnic identity also helps to increase the chances of healthy adjustment for these adolescents (Miller & MacIntosh, 1999). Further, evidence suggests that having a strong ethnic identity increases their sense of self-efficacy or mastery, which, in turn, increases their capacity to overcome adversity (Oyserman, Gant & Ager, 2005).
Family factors are also important in the development of resilience for African-American youth as for young people in other ethnic groups. Maternal support and support from peers tend to be associated with doing better academically (Gonzales, Cauce & Friedman, 1996). Living in a risky neighbourhood, on the other hand, tends to be associated with poorer school performance. Being involved in the community, having a sense of belonging at school and attending church regularly also had a positive impact on the psychological adjustment and resilience of African-American youth (McMahon, Sing & Garner, 2003).
According to Barrow and colleagues, being involved in church is a very significant aspect of life for many African Americans, and church has often been seen as a safe haven. Church also plays an important role in fostering the spiritual development of individuals, providing social support, strengthening race consciousness, providing leadership training, and in empowering young people to be involved in the struggles for equality and social change (Sheridan, 2003). There is evidence that those who are involved in the church tend to have higher self-esteem than those who are not involved (Maton, 2001). In fact, being actively involved in the church helps these young people to gain knowledge and positive values and to be exposed to successful role-models, all in the context of a highly supportive environment (Franklin, Boyd-Franklin & Draper, 2002).
Many African-American young people face all kinds of challenges and yet achieve success, whereas others struggle because they make choices that increase rather than decrease the problems that they face. Young people who are high on resilience will be less likely to make such poor decisions, but are also likely to have a greater chance of recovering from these kinds of difficulties.
The crucial factors for African American young people include engaging in activities that strengthen their identity in their own community among their own people, the encouragement of prosocial rather than antisocial behaviour and learning effective stress-management techniques. In addition, like other young people, they will do better in stable family environments that provide monitoring and support, and being involved in organizations that provide opportunities for training and volunteering in programs to help others.
8.11 Temperament and Resilience
In this book, we have focused a lot on the impact of parenting on adolescents and on adolescent behaviour, but have put less emphasis on child temperament as a predictor of later behaviour or on the interaction of child temperament and parenting as a predictor of later behaviour. Laursen, Collins, Lerner and Sternberg (2009) have commented on the strong focus in research on parents’ influences on adolescents’ behaviour while the influence of children’s behaviour on parenting tends to be ignored. Yet there is plenty of evidence, as we will discuss in this section, that parenting interacts with the temperament of the child to predict child behaviour at a later time.
The Australian Temperament Project (ATP; Smart, Hayes, Sanson & Toumbourou, 2007) is an excellent example of this type of study. It involved researchers from the Australian Institute of Family Studies who followed individuals from infancy to young adulthood (over 20 years). Because these researchers had such comprehensive longitudinal data, they were able to compare the infancy and childhoods of those who presented in adolescence as resilient and those who were struggling emotionally or who had become involved in problem behaviours. The findings also increase our understanding of the ways that the relatively small group of adolescents who became involved in problematic behaviour in adolescence, differed from their peers even when they were small children.
Smart et al. (2007) focused on the ways young people develop in three problem areas: antisocial behaviour, substance abuse and internalizing problems such as anxiety or depression. They found both similarities and differences in terms of the factors that were particularly important in the development of these issues. In support of our position that adolescence builds on earlier experiences in the family, these researchers found that temperamental difficulties and behaviour problems early in life tended to increase the risk of problems in adolescence and young adulthood. In line with arguments we have made earlier in this book, good quality parent–child relationships increased the likelihood of adolescents behaving appropriately and being well adjusted.
8.11.1 Temperament and Parenting: How They Interact
One of the issues in seeking to assess the effects of temperament is that temperament researchers tend to define temperament somewhat differently and use different measures of this variable. Temperament is generally seen as the characteristics that a person is born with and that affects that person’s acting, feeling and thinking. In some studies temperament is assessed in terms of whether a child is easy, average or difficult (e.g., Wu, Dixon, Dalton, Tudiver & Liu, 2011). For others, it is assessed in terms of variables such as sociability, emotionality and activity level (e.g., Holder & Klasssen, 2010). Other researchers have included shyness along with emotionality, sociability and activity (e.g., Ganiban, Ulbricht, Saudino, Reiss & Neiderhiser, 2011). Still others have used concepts such as effortful control and fearfulness (Sentse, Ormel, Veenstra, Verhulst & Oldehinkel, 2011) or harm avoidance and reward dependence (Manfredi, Caselli, Rovetto, Rebecchi, Sassaroli, & Spada, 2011) or fearfulness (Padilla-Walker & Nelson, 2010) or anger-proneness (Koenig, Barry & Kochanska, 2010) or behavioural inhibition and inhibitory control (Volbrecht & Goldsmith, 2010).
In a Japanese study, temperament was assessed using the Temperament and Character Inventory (Cloninger & Zohar, 2011) that measures seven dimensions: novelty seeking, harm avoidance, reward dependence, persistence, self-directedness, cooperativeness and self-transcendence (Suzuki, Matsumoto, Shibuya, Sadahiro, Kamata, Goto, et al., 2011). Cloninger and Zohar, however, consider that the first four variables in the list are temperament and the other three are character. It would seem important for researchers in this area to come to some agreement about how temperament should be measured. It is interesting to note, however, as we will show, that whatever way temperament is conceptualized and assessed it tends to have an effect on the behaviour of the child as well as on parenting behaviour.
In a relatively straightforward study of the links between temperament and happiness in children aged 9 to 12 years, Holder and Klassen (2010) showed that children tended to be happier when they were more sociable and active and less emotional, anxious and shy. In this study, temperament accounted for between 9 and 29 percent of the variance in child happiness depending on which measures were used (that is, ratings of children’s temperament by parents or children).
One study showing the interaction between child temperament and maternal characteristics is the study by Wu et al. (2011) of the joint effects of child temperament and maternal sensitivity in the development of obesity. In this study, the temperament of the child was assessed in terms of whether it was easy, average or difficult and the sensitivity of the mother was assessed observationally as mother and baby engaged in a semi-structured interaction. Mothers were assessed as either sensitive or insensitive, although we would expect that this variable would be better assessed on a broader scale. These researchers found that easy children with sensitive mothers were significantly less likely than other children to be overweight or obese during their school years.
One study explored the links between parenting and children’s peer relationships, and found that parents’ psychological control was important (Miller, Tserakhave, & Miller (2011). Children reported on the psychological control exercised by their parents and teachers reported on the extent to which children were neglected or excluded by their peers. Fathers’ psychological control was associated with a greater likelihood of being excluded for males, and the psychological control of both fathers and mothers was associated with the likelihood that shy females would be excluded from friendship networks. Thus it seems that the interaction of parenting and temperament can have an impact on the ability of children to make friends. Therefore, adolescents who are allowed to express their own opinions and contribute to decisions in their lives are more likely to enjoy positive relationships with their peers. We have discussed the effects of parental psychological control in Chapter 3 where we focus on the family environment.
A group of Italian researchers (Manfredi, Caselli, Rovetto, Rebecchi, Ruggiero, Sassaroli & Spada et al., 2011) measured anxiety, depression, temperament, parental styles, rumination and worry in a community sample of children, adolescents and young adults. Temperament in this study was assessed in terms of Cloninger’s (1986) conceptualization of temperament as including three variables: harm avoidance, novelty seeking and reward dependence. The researchers were focused on the links between the temperament measures, parenting styles and two types of recurrent negative thinking (rumination and worry). Both types of negative thinking were positively correlated with anxiety, depression, harm avoidance and parental overprotection. Rumination was also positively correlated with reward dependence and worry was positively correlated with novelty-seeking. Thus the temperament factors were found to be important predictors of these recurrent negative thinking patterns. In addition, parental overprotection was an independent predictor of both rumination and worry (Manfredi et al., 2011). One of the problems with parental overprotection is that this type of parenting tends to send a message to adolescents that they are inadequate and cannot be trusted to do what is required to care for themselves and keep themselves safe. Parents who encourage and support their adolescents to engage in an appropriate degree of exploration and autonomy facilitate the development of confidence and contentment.
Padilla-Walker and Nelson (2010) explored the role of temperament (assessed as fearfulness) in the association between parenting and adolescents’ values and behaviour in a sample of adolescents and young adults. These young people reported on their own fearfulness, as well as their prosocial values and also their perceptions of their mothers’ attachment and the appropriateness of her behaviour. There was an association between adolescents’ perceptions of their mothers’ attachment security and their own prosocial behaviour. In other words, those young people who saw their mothers as secure in attachment tended to engage in prosocial behaviour. In addition, perceptions of maternal security were related to the greater importance of prosocial values as well as prosocial behaviour for boys who were low on fearfulness. While it is interesting to examine the links between these measures, it is important to recognize that all the measures are based on a single informant, a procedure that would inflate the correlations. A more interesting exercise would have involved the mothers reporting on their own attachment and that measure being related to the measures provided by the adolescents. Another problem with this study is that all the measures are based on questionnaire data.
In a better-designed study carried out by Koenig, Barry and Kochanska (2010), both child temperament (assessed as proneness to anger at 25 and 38 months) and parenting were based on observational data. In addition, parents’ personalities were assessed using the Big Five personality factors (Costa & McCrae, 1992) as well as on optimism. Irrespective of child temperament, mothers’ low neuroticism and fathers’ high extraversion were related to more positive parenting. When dealing with difficult anger-prone children, mothers’ high optimism and fathers’ high openness were associated with more positive parenting. Hence, positive parenting encourages positive characteristics in adolescence.
8.12 Conclusions
In this chapter, we have focused on three related issues: the development of resilience and the importance of parenting to that process, the impact of temperament on parenting and the way that adolescence builds on infancy and childhood. Although parents often seem to believe that their socially-competent and well-behaved child could suddenly turn into a monster when he or she reaches adolescence, such a complete change in behaviour is unlikely. On the other hand, adolescence is a time when young people and their parents need to redefine their relationship.
First, adolescents need to begin the process of separating from parents and developing an autonomous self (see Chapter 2). In achieving this goal, adolescents need to ‘push the boundaries’ set by parents, and argue for the right to make their own decisions, at least in areas where this is appropriate. This process may involve increased conflict with parents and may be difficult for some parents to handle. Recognizing that such conflict is normal and an important part of growing up should help.
Second, adolescents and parents need to develop a new kind of relationship. This relationship will be built on mutual respect and be a more equal relationship than has existed in the past. Adolescents’ opinions need to be taken into account in the making of decisions that affect them. In addition, adolescents also need to be given more freedom to make their own decisions in areas where that is appropriate.
Of course, these changes should not happen overnight, but should happen gradually as parents allow more freedom and more responsibility to the adolescent. Balancing freedom and responsibility is important so that young people recognize that freedom and responsibility need to go together, and that they need to take responsibility for the consequences of decisions that they themselves make. Parents need to be there to support their adolescents when things don’t go well but should not relieve them of the responsibility for dealing with the consequences. If as children, young people have learned to deal with the consequences of their behaviour, this issue should be less problematic.
While the role of parents in, as far as possible, providing an emotionally warm family atmosphere, open communication, encouragement and support and adequate rules and supervision where needed is obviously important, we have also shown here that the temperament of the adolescent is relevant. The temperament of the adolescent may affect the parenting, and temperament and parenting interact to affect the behaviour of the adolescent. When the importance of temperament is acknowledged, two other conclusions can be drawn: First, adolescence builds on the temperament of the infant and child as was evident in the Australian Temperament Project, and second, it is inappropriate to see the parents as the ones who are solely responsible for adolescents’ behaviour.
Most parents have the goal of raising resilient adolescents who will be able to make responsible decisions and react positively to difficult circumstances and recover from those situations with little impact on their mental health. It is important to remember, however, that both the adolescent and the parent contribute to such outcomes and the critical issue may be maintaining a relationship of respect between the two, not surrendering to any unreasonable demands of the adolescent but allowing for respectful discussion between parent and adolescent where differences can be worked through for the benefit of both.