Where we are able, we comment on the extent to which adolescents’ family forms are different than those of younger children. Thus, some of the data that we present apply to all youth, not just adolescents. Further, many studies of family structure or stability aggregate data for all minors (ages 0–17). We cite studies using a variety of age or grade ranges, including 12–17, 18–24, or grades 7–12, primarily due to the ages of participants. This is roughly the time period from the onset of puberty to the beginning of adult roles ( Steinberg 2016).

Thus, we start by describing change in the family households of adolescents and then broaden our focus to consider non-residential family members and their connections to adolescents over time.Īdolescence is a phase of life whose exact age bounds vary by expert or study, but are generally considered to encompass the second decade of life. Sometimes adolescents move between households following custody arrangements or other special circumstances. Some family members reside in the same household as a given adolescent and some do not. Family members may be related by blood, marriage, or other lasting bonds (e.g., cohabitation, guardianships, or adoption). For our purposes, we focus on all parents, siblings, and extended family members who play a role in adolescents’ lives. It is our goal to provide as detailed a picture as we can as to the range and distribution of adolescents’ family contexts in addition to suggesting methods for further enhancing our understanding of parenting contexts during adolescence.įamily has always been a relatively elusive concept – definitions of family have changed over time, families themselves change over time, and members of families change (i.e., development and aging) ( Harris 2008 Powell et al. We then examine current practices in measuring the family contexts of adolescents and recommend innovations such as family network and profile methods.

We then discuss how family members might also be spread across other households, near and far. After defining what we mean by “family” and “adolescence,” we describe the family households of adolescents, or the family members with whom they tend to live. In this article, we review and summarize a wide body of literature showing how family forms and their prevalence have changed over the last several decades. Thus, to more accurately theorize, measure, and interpret findings regarding the parenting of adolescents, we must be clear about how families and households have changed over time, especially their increasingly dynamic and complex natures. Studies of parenting have been increasingly recognizing how styles of parenting and their impact vary across cultures, socioeconomic strata, and family structures (e.g., Lareau 2003 Newman 2012 Sorkhabi and Mandara 2013 see also from this issue Jones, Loiselle, and Highlander Lansford et al. Two cornerstones of contemporary theory, warmth and control, are concepts developed primarily between the 1930s and 1960s ( Baldwin 1955 Baumrind 1967 Becker 1964 Sears, Maccoby, and Levin 1957 Symonds 1939) -a period in which about 90 percent of children under the age of 18 lived with two parents ( Ruggles and Brower 2003). Thus, social scientists, policy-makers, and practitioners continue to investigate and attempt to promote successful models for parenting adolescents.įor better or worse, many current investigations of the features and types of parenting that seem most beneficial for adolescents are based on theories of parenting and adolescence developed decades ago when family structures and their distribution in the population looked very different than they do today. 2001 Simons and Conger 2007 Steinberg 2001). The ways that adolescents are “parented,” including the provision of material and psychosocial resources, the quality of parent-child interactions and relationships, and levels of parental monitoring and scaffolding of youth have been consistently shown to matter for adolescents’ academic outcomes, subjective well-being, sexual behavior, substance use, delinquency, and other outcomes ( DiClemente et al. Even though a universal feature of adolescence is the growing autonomy that youth gain from parental oversight, parents, and the family context in general, continue to play a vital role in adolescents’ lives.

Parenting across diverse contexts