A Longitudinal Examination of the Relation Between Lie-Telling, Secrecy, Parent–Child Relationship Quality, and Depressive Symptoms in Late-Childhood and Adolescence

Adolescents' relationships with parents and romantic partners in eight countries

INTRODUCTION

Creating romantic relationships characterized by high-quality, satisfaction, few conflicts, and reasoning strategies to handle conflicts is an important developmental task for adolescents connected to the relational models they receive from their parents. This study examines how parent-adolescent conflicts, attachment, positive parenting, and communication are related to adolescents' romantic relationship quality, satisfaction, conflicts, and management.

METHOD

We interviewed 311 adolescents at two time points (females = 52%, ages 15 and 17) in eight countries (China, Colombia, Italy, Kenya, the Philippines, Sweden, Thailand, and the United States). Generalized and linear mixed models were run considering the participants' nesting within countries.

RESULTS

Adolescents with negative conflicts with their parents reported low romantic relationship quality and satisfaction and high conflicts with their romantic partners. Adolescents experiencing an anxious attachment to their parents reported low romantic relationship quality, while adolescents with positive parenting showed high romantic relationship satisfaction. However, no association between parent-adolescent relationships and conflict management skills involving reasoning with the partner was found. No associations of parent-adolescent communication with romantic relationship dimensions emerged, nor was there any effect of the country on romantic relationship quality or satisfaction.

CONCLUSION

These results stress the relevance of parent-adolescent conflicts and attachment as factors connected to how adolescents experience romantic relationships.

The Relationship of Parent-Child Technoference and Child Problematic Smartphone Use: The Roles of Parent-Child Relationship, Negative Parenting Styles, and Children's Gender

Purpose

With the increasing ubiquity of smartphones in our daily lives, technoference has emerged as a novel threat to family relationships and child development. This study explored the impact of parent-child technoference on child problematic smartphone use and its underlying mechanism and potential gender difference among children.

Participants and Methods

The participants were 3032 fourth-grade students (42.6% female; 80.6% one-child families; 32.9% lower income level families, 33.3% middle income level families; Mage = 10.59 years, SD=0.32) from 535 primary schools. Students in the target classes were invited to participate anonymously in the questionnaire survey in classrooms. Then, SPSS, AMOS and other software were used to analyze the data.

Results

1) Parent-child technoference, negative parenting styles and child problematic smartphone use were positively correlated with each other, while they were negatively correlated with parent-child relationship; 2) Parent-child technoference can not only directly and positively predict child problematic smartphone use, but also indirectly and positively predict child problematic smartphone use through parent-child relationship and negative parenting styles respectively; 3) Parent-child relationship and negative parenting styles play a chain mediating role between parent-child technoference and child problematic smartphone use; 4) There are significant gender differences in the chain mediation model.

Conclusion

The results showed that parent-child technoference significantly affected child problematic smartphone use through a chain mediation of parent-child relationship and negative parenting styles. Gender differences were observed, with girls experiencing a more pronounced disruption in the parent-child relationship, while boys were more likely to develop problematic smartphone use. In cases of strained parent-child relationships due to technoference, girls also tended to perceive more negative parenting styles. These findings promote parents' understanding of the influencing factors and mechanisms of child problematic smartphone use, especially helpful for follow-up measures to prevent and intervene child problematic smartphone use from the perspective of families and parents.

Profiles of Family and School Experiences and Adjustment of Adolescents During the Transition to High School

Although family and school experiences play an important role in adolescents' adjustment during the transition to high school, most prior studies investigated the effects of these experiences in isolation; their joint implications for both adolescents' concurrent and long-term adjustment outcomes are less clear, and the potential role of individual characteristics within such associations remains understudied. Based on 525 10th graders (Mage = 15.48, SDage = 0.71, 43.6% boys) who participated in a longitudinal study, the present research aimed to identify distinct family and school experience profiles among first-year high school students and examine their associations with adolescents' internalizing problems and externalizing problems, both concurrently and 18 months later. Latent profile analysis revealed four distinctive profiles: thriving, low resources-moderate family risk, developmental stress-high parental conflicts, and developmental stress-high peer victimization profiles. The other three profiles (vs. the thriving profile) reported significantly higher levels of concurrent internalizing problems; while these differences diminished after 18 months. However, the enduring impacts of these profiles on internalizing problems persisted among adolescents with higher levels of environmental sensitivity. Additionally, adolescents characterized by two developmental stress profiles (vs. the thriving profile) exhibited significantly higher levels of externalizing problems both currently and longitudinally. Findings underscore the importance of identifying at-risk populations among adolescents during the transition to high school by including both family and school experiences when examining environmental influence on their adjustment, as well as the necessity to take individual environmental sensitivity into account when examining these associations.

Is childhood lying shaped by callous-unemotional traits or does lie-telling make children more callous-unemotional? A longitudinal between- and within-person perspective

The current study aims to advance knowledge on the causal interrelationship between childhood CU traits and lying both at a between- and a within-person perspective across a significant developmental period of mid-childhood to mid-adolescence. Cross-lagged panel models and Random-intercept cross-lagged panel models were used to investigate the prospective associations between lying and the distinct subcomponents of CU traits, including Callousness, Uncaring, and Unemotional in a sample of 719 children (T1; Mage = 10.73 years, SDage = 1.38, range = 7-15 years, 54.4% girls) across four assessment points. Results supported large vulnerability effects at the between-person level across time, indicating that CU traits predominantly influence the subsequent development of lying, with Callousness and Uncaring showing most profound effects on subsequent developmental processes of lying. At the within-person level, fluctuations in CU traits and lying were overall meaningfully related, but no causal relationship could be empirically determined. These findings provide a differentiated etiological viewpoint on the intertwinement of CU traits and lying at a young age, and underscore the importance of an early identification of children with callous and uncaring tendencies in order to prevent more persistent lying in adolescence.

A Latent Profile Analysis of Lie-Telling to Parents and Friends during Adolescence

Adolescence has been suggested to be a time of heightened lie-telling. The current study used a latent profile analysis to examine unique patterns of lie-telling for lies told to parents and friends during adolescence as well as whether adjustment indicators (relationship quality, depressive symptoms, social anxiety, externalizing problems) could be used to predict group membership. These patterns were examined among 828 10- to 16- year-olds (Mage = 12.39, SD = 1.69, 49.9% male). In both relationships, 5-profile solutions emerged; most adolescents reported very infrequent lie-telling, while a small portion (less than 5%) told high rates of lies. Adjustment indicators predicted group membership. Depressive symptoms, social anxiety, parent relationship quality, and externalizing problems predicted group membership for lying to parents. Depressive symptoms and social anxiety predicted group membership for lying to friends. The findings indicate that high rates of lie-telling found in previous research may be driven by a small number of prolific lie-tellers.

Deception is associated with reduced social connection

Lies can have major consequences if undetected. Research to date has focused primarily on the consequences of deception for receivers once lies are discovered. We advance deception research and relationship science by studying the social consequences of deception for the sender-even if their lies remain undetected. In a correlational study of video conversations (Study 1; N = 776), an experimental study of text conversations (Study 2; N = 416), and a survey of dispositional tendencies (Study 3; N = 399), we find consistent evidence that people who lie tend to assume that others are lying too, and this impedes their ability to form social connections. The findings provide insight into how (dis)honesty and loneliness may go together, and suggest that lies-even when undetected-harm our relationships.

Active Parental Mediation and Adolescent Problematic Internet Use: The Mediating Role of Parent-Child Relationships and Hiding Online Behavior

In today's information society, with the growing integration of the Internet into individuals' lives, problematic Internet use (PIU) among adolescents has become more prevalent. Therefore, we conducted this study to investigate the correlation between active parental mediation and PIU in adolescents, as well as the potential mediating roles of parent-child relationship and adolescents' hiding online behavior. A total of 539 middle school students (mean age = 13.384) were recruited for this study and participated by completing a series of paper-and-pencil questionnaires. The findings indicated a significant negative relationship between active parental mediation and PIU. Furthermore, both the mediating role of the parent-child relationship and the role of hiding online behavior were found to be significant. Specifically, the mediating role is comprised of two paths: the independent mediating role of the parent-child relationship, and the sequential mediating role involving both the parent-child relationship and hiding online behavior. The study contributes an innovative theoretical perspective to deepen the understanding of the formation mechanism of PIU. Moreover, it offers practical empirical insights for the prevention and intervention of PIU among adolescents.

Factors influencing parent-child relationships in chinese nurses: a cross-sectional study

BACKGROUND

With the development of the social economy, the effective coordination of the conflict between work and family has become an urgent problem for most parents. Such conflicts are especially acute in the families of nurses with children. Therefore, a timely understanding of the status quo of the parent-child relationship and associated risk factors among nurses will assist in improving their family harmony and the healthy growth of their children.

METHODS

A total of 350 nurses with children at a general tertiary hospital in Sichuan Province, China, were interviewed using a structured questionnaire between June 23 and July 9, 2022. The results were analyzed by multiple linear regression using the stepwise method.

RESULTS

The results showed that the parent-child relationship received a middle-level mean score of 77.74 (SD = 10.77). The factors that influenced the parent-child relationship among nurses included the parents' character type (β = 0.143, P = 0.002), feeling tired due to dealing with patients (β=-0.150, P = 0.002), the nurse-patient relationship (β = 0.137, P = 0.004), the age of older children (β=-0.153, P = 0.001), number of children (β=-0.093, P = 0.041), sleep quality (β = 0.116, P = 0.014), and family adaptability (β = 0.308, P = 0.000); these factors accounted for 31.3% of the variance in parent-child relationships among nurses.

CONCLUSION

The findings of this study will help policy makers and nursing managers to better understand parent-child relationships in Chinese nurses. The results highlighted the importance of the creation of a family-oriented work environment while paying more attention to the parent-child relationships of nurses who are introverted and have more or older children. After busy workdays, nurses should also be encouraged to participate more in family decision-making and strategic parent-child interactions to avoid negative effects on children caused by work-related emotional exhaustion, physical and mental fatigue, and other reasons. The development of good parent-child relationships may help maintain both their and their children's mental health while enhancing their enthusiasm for work and their professional identity.

Increasing young children's honest reports and decreasing their transgressions

Young children break rules (i.e., transgress) and then lie about those transgressions. By adolescence, lying is associated with decreased trust, communication, and quality of relationships, and with befriending antisocial peers. To decrease lies, we replicated differentially reinforcing honest reports about transgressions for one 6-year-old neurotypical child and two 7-year-old children who were diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. After all children learned to report honestly about transgressions, we extended past research to decrease transgressions by differentially reinforcing alternative play behaviors. For all children, this resulted in increased levels of play, decreased transgressions, and continued honesty about infrequent transgressions. Caregivers were satisfied with children's increased honest reports and decreased transgressions. The results support first reinforcing children's honest reports about transgressions and then decreasing transgressions to satisfying levels for caregivers.

Adolescents' Well-Being with Respect to the Patterns of Disclosure to and Secrecy from Parents and the Best Friend: A Person-Centered Examination

Adolescents' disclosure and secrecy behaviors have important implications for their well-being. Previous research examined adolescent disclosure and secrecy mostly in one close relationship (i.e., one's mother). What remains to be addressed is the patterns of disclosure and secrecy considering adolescents' other close relationships and the well-being differences between these patterns. Adopting a person-centered approach, the current study examined constellations of disclosure and secrecy in adolescents' relationships with their mother, father and best friends, and the extent to which these patterns differ with respect to life satisfaction, problem-solving confidence, and anxiety. The sample consisted of middle adolescents (N = 1097; M_age = 15.12; range = 14-16; 61.6% female) from nine public schools in Istanbul, Turkey. Analysis conducted for the whole sample showed that best friends were the most frequently disclosed confidants followed by mothers, and secrecy was similar for best friends and mothers. Adolescents were least likely to disclose to their fathers and keep secrets from them more frequently. Comparisons of the five classes identified with latent profile analysis, however, indicated that the class with the best well-being status (highest life satisfaction, problem-solving confidence, and lowest anxiety) consisted of adolescents who disclosed most often to their mothers, seconded by best friends, and kept secrets less often from their parents than their best friends. The class with the lowest well-being status consisted of adolescents who had lowest disclosure and highest secrecy in three close relationships. Overall, findings underscored the usefulness of person-centered analytic approach showing that while best friends were the primary confidents when examined with a variable-centered approach, adolescents with the highest well-being status reported to disclose most often to their mothers. This finding underlines the importance of sharing personal information and being less secretive especially with mothers in adolescence.