The Importance of Parents' Community Connections for Adolescent Well-being: An Examination of Military Families

Community, Context, and Coping: How Social Connections Influence Coping and Well-Being for Military Members and Their Spouses

Military members and their spouses (n = 223 families) were selected from an Active Duty Army installation and assessed with regard to their connections with the military community, their levels of coping with military culture demands, and their reports of individual (depression and life satisfaction) and family well-being. Guided by the contextual model of family stress and the social organization theory of action and change, results from a structural equation model indicated that military community connections, for both military members and their civilian spouses, were related to coping with the military culture and its demands, which in turn was related to both individual and family well-being. Unique actor and partner effects also emerged where both active duty military members' and their civilian spouses' perceptions of military community connections influenced the civilian spouses' satisfaction with military life, but only the active duty military members' community connections influenced their military-specific coping. Additionally, the associations between military-specific coping and individual and family well-being only had actor effects. When examined within the context of important military culture elements, namely rank and extent of military transitions (deployment and relocation), these core findings linking communities to coping and well-being were unchanged. Implications for theory, future research, and practice are shared.

Stepfamily Processes and Youth Adjustment: The Role of Perceived Neighborhood Collective Efficacy

Using a representative sample from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health and a recently developed stepfamily-process typology, this study explores three plausible functions of perceived neighborhood collective efficacy with respect to stepfamily life and youth adjustment: an ability to (1) prevent maladaptive patterns of stepfamily processes, (2) promote stepchildren's adjustment beyond the influence of stepfamily processes, and (3) protect stepchildren's adjustment when faced with maladaptive patterns of stepfamily processes. The results indicate that higher levels of perceived neighborhood collective efficacy are associated with more adaptive stepfamily processes and higher levels of youth self-esteem over time, net the influence of stepfamily processes.