Adolescents' attachment style with parents and conflict management with parents and best friend: An investigation of longitudinal associations and two mediational processes

The current dissertation examined the relation between attachment with each parent and conflict management with parents and close friends across adolescence. Adolescents (n = 205, M = 13 years, SD = 1.30 at T1) answered questionnaires assessing anxious and avoidant attachment with each parent (at ages 13, 15, and 17) and others in general (age 14), and conflict management with mother, father, and best friend (ages 15 and 17). Study 1 investigated the relation between attachment and conflict management with parents from age 15 to 17. Results indicated that the more adolescents were anxiously or avoidantly attached to their mother, the less they collaborated with her over time. Similar findings for avoidant attachment with father were for girls only. The more adolescents were avoidantly attached to their parents, the more they avoided conflict with them over time. Bidirectional relations were found for avoidant attachment and collaboration, as well as for attachment and conflict avoidance with father. Study 2 examined the relation between adolescents’ attachment with each parent at age 13 and conflict management with best friends three years later, testing two mediators for this relation, attachment with others in general and conflict management with each parent. The more adolescents were avoidantly attached with their parents, the less they collaborated with their best friend. This relation was fully mediated by avoidant attachment with others in general and collaboration with father, and, for girls only by collaboration with mother. The more boys were anxiously attached with their parents, the less they collaborated and the more they avoided conflict or used stalemate with their best friends. The relation between anxious attachment with mother and collaboration tended to be mediated by general anxious attachment, whereas the relation between boys’ anxious attachment with father and the use of negative conflict behaviours with friends was mediated by the use of those same conflict strategies with their fathers. Thus, anxious attachment with mother impacted boys’ positive conflict behaviours with friends by generalizing to close others, whereas anxious attachment with father impacted their use of negative conflict behaviours through the practice of these behaviours with father