Following parental separation or divorce, children’s voices and their legal right to participate are currently insufficiently guaranteed in families, during mediation, and in courts. There is a lack of scientific knowledge on how best to give effect to child participation. This study investigates whether children's participation in divorce-related decisions increases their sense of autonomy, relatedness, and competence, and thus improves their general functioning. In addition, possible risks of child participation to their adjustment are examined, as well as individual differences in this regard. The research will result in practical guidelines and tools to improve the participation of children around divorce.

• dr. Zoë Rejaän
• dr. Jolien van der Graaff
• dr. Inge van der Valk
• prof. dr. Maja Dekovic
• prof. mr. Wendy Schrama
• dr. Rianne van Dijk
• mr. dr. Charlotte Mol
• Selina Burgard

I chair the hub Where do I belong, which is part of Dynamics of Youth, one of the four strategic themes of Utrecht University. In this hub, together with a team of researchers from Pedagogics, Law, Social Geography, Computer Sciences and Linguistics, I examine the daily underlying processes that affect the belonging of adolescents living in more than one home, such as after parental divorce. Many children grow up in divorced or blended families, in which the family members do not all share the same household. Frequently, questions arise about the psychological and ethical aspects surrounding these modern families. After all, our sense of belonging originates from the first relationships with our primary caregivers. But what happens when children grow up in multi-resident families, are not raised by both biological parents, or live in two different homes and neighbourhoods?

• dr. Irina van Aalst
• prof. mr. Wendy Schrama
• dr. Inge van der Valk
• prof. dr. Aoju Chen
• dr. Zoë Rejaän

RADAR is an ongoing long-term longitudinal multi-informant and multi-method study, which aims to examine the dynamic interplay between person and environment characteristics in the development of adolescents and young adults. RADAR follows youth across a period of 15 to 20 years, based on surveys, observations, and experience sampling, combined with psychophysiological, (epi)genetic, and neighbourhood data, the latter in collaboration with psychiatry and social geography. RADAR G3 focuses on intergenerational transmission of parenting and psychosocial adjustment. RADAR is part of the NWO Gravitation Consortium on Individual Development, of which I am member of the steering committee and leader of the work package focusing on Intergenerational transmission.

In the ERC-CoG INTRANSITION project, I examine how interactions with parents and friends affect adolescents’ identity, autonomy and psychosocial adjustment during school transitions from elementary to secondary education and from secondary to tertiary education. The project will examine intra-individual (or within-person, as opposed to inter-individual or between-person) processes of change in identity and autonomy at different time scales: moment-to-moment behaviour during interactions with parents and friends, relational experiences across hours and days, and long-term development. This project particularly increases our understanding of developmental processes of identity and autonomy at individual level that drive developmental changes during transitional periods.

• Esther Bernasco
• dr. M.H. (Monika) Donker
• dr. Stefanos Mastrotheodoros
• dr. Annabelle Christiaens