Abstract
Prior studies have indicated that the relationship between parent-child conflict and adolescent antisocial behavior is at least partially shared environmental in origin. However, all available research on this topic (to our knowledge) relies exclusively on parent and/or adolescent informant-reports, both of which are subject to various forms of rater bias. As the presence of significant shared environmental effects has often been attributed to rater bias in the past (Baker et al. Journal of Abnormal Psychology 16:219–235, 2007; Bartels et al. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry 42:1351–1359, 2003, Twin Research 7:162–175, 2004; Hewitt et al. Behavior Genetics 22:293–317, 1992), it would be important to confirm that findings of shared environmental mediation persist when even examining (presumably more objective) observer-ratings of these constructs. The current study thus examined the origins of the relationship between parent-child conflict and adolescent acting-out behavior, as measured using both observer-ratings and various informant-reports. Participants included 1,199 adopted and non-adopted adolescents in 610 families from the Sibling Interaction and Behavior Study (SIBS). Results indicated that parent-child conflict consistently predicts acting-out behavior in adopted adolescents, and moreover, that this association is equivalent to that in biologically-related adolescents. Most importantly, these findings did not vary across parent- and adolescent-reported or observer-ratings of parent-child conflict and acting-out behavior. Such findings argue strongly against rater bias as a primary explanation of shared environmental mediation of the association between parent-child conflict and adolescent antisocial behavior.
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Notes
Klahr et al. (2011) also found that parent-child conflict predicted the development of conduct problems over time, but not vice versa. These results suggest that the relationship between parent-child conflict and conduct problems cannot be accounted for by evocative rGE, further bolstering claims that this relationship is indeed shared-environmental in origin.
The interaction between reported parent-child conflict/observer-rated parenting and adoption status was approaching significance (p = .06 and .08, respectively) for predicting acting-out behaviors toward the sibling. Although outside of the scope of this paper, these findings suggest that there may be important sibling dynamics which differ across adoptive vs. non-adoptive families. These sibling effects should be examined in future research.
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This research was supported by the grant R01 MH066140.
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Klahr, A.M., Rueter, M.A., McGue, M. et al. The Relationship between Parent-Child Conflict and Adolescent Antisocial Behavior: Confirming Shared Environmental Mediation. J Abnorm Child Psychol 39, 683–694 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-011-9505-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-011-9505-7