François Poulin

The quality of mother–child and father–child relationships evolves during emerging adulthood. Given the diverse life paths of young adults, the positive (intimacy) and negative (conflict) dimensions underpinning these relationships may change heterogeneously. This study aimed to identify trajectories of intimacy and conflict with mothers and fathers from ages 16 to 30, explore the overlap between mothers’ and fathers’ trajectories, and examine whether child characteristics and family characteristics predict membership in these trajectories. Data were drawn from a longitudinal study initiated with 390 participants recruited from sixth-grade classes (58% girls). Intimacy and conflicts were measured at ages 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 25, and 30, and antecedents were measured at ages 12, 13, and 15. Latent class growth analyses revealed three trajectories of intimacy for mothers: (1) low-stable (30%), (2) moderate-quadratic (40%), and (3) high-quadratic (30%); and for fathers: (1) low-stable (44%), (2) moderate-quadratic (44%), and (3) high-quadratic (12%). Two conflict trajectories were identified for mothers: (1) high-linear (18%) and (2) low-quadratic (82%), and for fathers: (1) high-stable (15%) and (2) low-quadratic (85%). Child gender and socioeconomic status predicted mother-intimacy trajectories, while family cohesion and children’s depressive symptoms predicted intimacy and conflict trajectories with both parents, respectively.

Because educational attainment is associated with well-being in the long term, it is important to understand the developmental processes that enhance academic outcomes during adolescence. Also, although the importance of friends is well documented in adolescence, little is known about how close friends’ characteristics work together with youth’s own characteristics to shape adolescents’ educational trajectories. This study fills an important gap in knowledge by focusing on how middle school students’ academic achievement and externalizing problems are associated with their friends’ achievement and externalizing problems over time, and how these variables predict educational attainment in adulthood. This study innovates by examining developmental cascades involving adolescents’ academic achievement, externalizing problems, and these characteristics in their close friends in the context of random-intercept cross-lagged panel modeling (RI-CLPM), which disentangles within-person changes and between-person differences during the three years of middle school. The sample included 998 middle school students (M_age at recruitment: 12.21 years old; SD = 0.37 years), 42.3% of whom were European Americans, 29.0% African Americans, 6.8% Latinos, 5.2%, Asian Americans, 16.2% youth of other ethnicities, including mixed ethnicity, and 47.3% were female. At the within-person level, only one type of interdomain cascade was corroborated, as youth displaying high levels of externalizing problems reported close friendships with low-achieving friends in the next year. At the between-person level, only the random intercept representing the stability of adolescents’ academic achievement throughout middle school predicted educational attainment in adulthood (average of 28 years old). In essence, this study clarifies that the etiological mechanisms leading up to adult educational attainment involve only adolescents’ own stable academic achievement, and not their externalizing behaviors or friends’ academic achievement and externalizing behaviors.

Parental knowledge is often the result of parents soliciting information from their child and their child’s disclosure of that information. Although child disclosure is most closely (and negatively) associated with behavior problems in adolescence, it is not yet known whether this is also the case in childhood. The aim of this study was to examine the longitudinal associations between child disclosure, parental solicitation, and behavior problems in Grades 1 to 4 in a Canadian sample, taking into account intra-individual stability, the child’s gender, and socioeconomic status. The mothers and teachers of 911 children (62.7% boys) completed questionnaires in Grades 1, 2, 3, and 4. A Random Intercept Cross-Lagged Panel Model (RI-CLPM) showed that behavior problems in Grade 2 predicted an increase in parental solicitation in Grade 3. In contrast, behavior problems in Grade 3 predicted a decrease in parental solicitation in Grade 4. No cross-lagged association with child disclosure was observed. Although these results differ from those reported in adolescence, they suggest that middle childhood is a sensitive period for parent–child communication and behavior problems.

Cadre de la recherche : Les parents peuvent recourir à au moins deux stratégies pour limiter les effets néfastes de l’utilisation des technologies numériques chez leur enfant. La « médiation active » renvoie à la co-utilisation, aux discussions et aux opinions échangées avec l’enfant sur les influences de la technologie. La « médiation restrictive » correspond à la mise en place de règles autour de l’utilisation ainsi que des mesures techniques, comme installer des contrôles parentaux. Objectifs : L’objectif de cette étude est d’examiner certains déterminants propres aux parents (c.-à-d. genre, niveau de scolarité, utilisation problématique des médias sociaux) et familiaux (c.-à-d. stress parental, taille de la fratrie, part de responsabilité dans les soins aux enfants et l’âge de l’enfant) qui pourraient être associés à l’utilisation de ces médiations. Méthodologie : Un échantillon de 112 parents ont rempli des questionnaires (75 % femmes ; M âge = 33,42 ; É.T. = 0,51) dont l’enfant (M âge = 6,97 ; É.T. = 3,89 ; étendu = 1 à 16 ans) utilise la tablette ou le téléphone portable. Deux modèles de régressions linéaires hiérarchiques avec les formes de médiations comme variables dépendantes ont été testés. Résultats : La médiation active est positivement associée à l’utilisation problématique des médias sociaux, la taille de la fratrie ainsi que la part de responsabilité dans les soins aux enfants et négativement associée au stress parental. La médiation restrictive n’est liée à aucune de ces variables. Conclusions : Puisque la médiation restrictive inclut des mesures techniques plus strictes, il est possible qu’elle soit plutôt associée à des évènements circonstanciels, comme une crainte de la part du parent en réponse à un évènement précis. Contribution : Une meilleure compréhension des facteurs et des contextes influençant les comportements de médiation parentale permet d’offrir un plus large éventail de stratégies informées et adaptées à la situation singulière de chaque famille. Ainsi, les parents peuvent favoriser l’intériorisation de comportements sécuritaires de la part de l’enfant, sans entrainer d’effets néfastes indésirés de l’utilisation des technologies numériques.

According to the social clock and statistical norms, a transition into sexual activity after age 18 years is considered late. This longitudinal study examines whether late sexual transition is related to delays in the achievement of developmental tasks and lower psychological well-being in emerging adulthood for heterosexual individuals. A sample of 300 participants (61.3% women) was assessed annually from age 15 to 22 years and again at age 25, of which 43 reported sexual intercourse at age 19 or older or remained virgins in emerging adulthood. Results indicate that late sexual transition, particularly for men, is prospectively associated with still being at school, working fewer hours per week, being single and having no kids at age 25. It is also positively associated with depression and anxiety symptoms, interpersonal sensitivity, hostility, lower self-esteem, and lower happiness. This study enriches the understanding of slower developmental trajectories and the associations between late sexual transition and subsequent trajectories in emerging adulthood.

Today’s adolescents will inevitably face the negative effects of climate change and will need to engage in pro-environmental behaviors (PEBs) as part of the solutions. The primary objective of this scoping review was to identify the individual, peer and family, and school and community predictors of PEB in adolescence. The secondary objectives were to highlight the main types of PEBs, the main conceptual frameworks examined in adolescence, and the main research gaps mentioned in prior studies. A bibliographic search on multiple databases was conducted. Among the 2578 records identified, 209 were retrieved and assessed for eligibility, and 62 met the inclusion criteria (i.e., peer-reviewed primary research articles published in English in the last ten years with adolescent data). Results reveal a heterogeneous set of correlates with an imbalance favoring individual correlates. The most frequent PEBs in the reviewed studies were linked to energy and water conservation. The most frequent theoretical frameworks were the Theory of Planned Behavior and the Value–Belief–Norm Theory, while the most frequently highlighted research gap was the use of cross-sectional designs. These results can inform the targets of interventions aimed at increasing PEBs, which are fundamental aspects of the psychology of sustainability and sustainable development.