Adolescence can be challenging for families, as adolescents’ urge for autonomy drives changes towards more egalitarian parent-child relationships, often resulting in more conflict and less closeness. Although parent-child relationships are important for adolescents’ psychosocial functioning, we know little on how parent-adolescent interactions unfold in real time and how these real-time processes relate to psychosocial functioning. Therefore, we will examine parent-adolescent dynamics on a micro-level, its associations with macro-level (changes in) relationship quality and adolescent adjustment, and potential moderators. Unraveling which characteristics of parent-adolescent interactions are most beneficial, for whom, and under what circumstances, can help navigating family challenges during adolescence.

• Valerie Spieker
• dr. Rianne van Dijk
• dr. M.H. (Monika) Donker

Parental stress entails parents’ negative feelings towards themselves and their children, and is often the result of a mismatch between the demands and resources of fulfilling the parental role. Parents' self-concept (i.e., including both content and structure) can be a personal resource and is a non-negligible factor in parental stress that requires further exploration. As the content of self-concept, personality dimensions (e.g., Big-Five) have been linked to parental stress by affecting people’s selection, appraisal, and coping styles of stressful events. However, a systematic analysis is still needed as effect sizes differ across studies. As for the structure of self-concept, despite being considered a protective factor against stressors by making people more able to cope with negative appraisals, no study has directly investigated the relationship between self-concept clarity and parental stress. Therefore, to supplement the gaps mentioned above, this project examines how parents’ self-concept (both the content and the structure) is related to parental stress. Firstly, a meta-analysis will be applied to examine the magnitude of the relationship between the content of self-concept (i.e., Big-Five personality) and parental stress, as well as moderators that could dampen or strengthen this association. The second and third studies will examine the role of both the content and structure of self-concept in predicting parental stress using the longitudinal multigenerational RADAR dataset. In the fourth study, a qualitative study will be conducted to explore the role self-concept plays in relieving parental stress.

• dr. Sanne Geeraerts
• Wenxuan Hao
• dr. M.H. (Monika) Donker

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

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

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