From Family Dynamics to Adolescent Social Functioning: A Longitudinal Study of Parental Depression and Emotional Insecurity

The present study tested the relation between parental depressive symptoms and adolescent social maladjustment, with parental negative expressiveness and adolescents’ emotional insecurity as key mediating processes. By extending family-based concepts to the social sphere, this study explored how emotional processes within the family were related to adolescents’ social functioning. In this study, data were collected from 272 families annually over a three-year period, beginning when adolescents were in the seventh grade. Structural equation modeling was employed to assess parental depressive symptoms at Time 1, parental negative expressiveness and adolescent emotional insecurity at Time 2, and adolescent social maladjustment at Time 3. Findings indicated that both mothers’ and fathers’ depressive symptoms significantly contributed to parental negative expressiveness, affecting not only the their own but also their partners’ emotional expression. Parental negative expressiveness, in turn, was significantly related to adolescents’ emotional insecurity. Heightened emotional insecurity was associated with greater social maladjustment in the form of peer difficulties, delinquent behaviors, conduct issues, and social withdrawal, after controlling for autoregressive effects. These findings enrich the literature by delineating the longitudinal effects of parental depressive symptoms on social functioning in adolescence.