PARENTIFICATION IN RURAL AFRICAN AMERICAN SINGLE MOTHER FAMILIES: A STUDY OF ADOLESCENT COMPETENCE IN CONTEXT

The primary aim of this dissertation was to examine parentification from a cultural and resilience perspective. Using longitudinal data, this dissertation represents one of the only efforts to clarify the family patterns of at-risk families that create parentification, and to discover the conditions in which parentification serves as a protective factor. Additionally, this study begins to refine our understanding of this complex family relationship by distinguishing among discrete domains of parentification. Data from the National Institute of Health, National Institute of Child and Human Development Study of Competence in Children and Families was utilized to complete the analyses. Participants involved in the present study included 156 randomly selected rural African American single-mothers with a first-born child aged 10-12 years. Based on both the risk and resilience model and the ecological model, the current study investigated the effects of maternal resources, maternal psychological functioning, parenting practices, and adolescent parentification on adolescent internalizing and externalizing behavior over time. Multiple hierarchical regression analyses revealed that instrumental aspects o