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Romantic Relationship Patterns from Adolescence to Emerging Adulthood: Associations with Family and Peer Experiences in Early Adolescence

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Abstract

The present study identifies and describes romantic relationship patterns from adolescence to adulthood and examines their associations with family and peer experiences in early adolescence. In a 13-year longitudinal study, 281 youth (58 % girls) identified all their romantic partners each year from the ages of 16–24. Dimensions of family relationships (family cohesion, parent–child conflict) and peer relationships (peer likeability, social withdrawal, close friendships, other-sex friendships) were assessed at age 12. Latent class analyses brought out five distinct romantic relationship patterns and significant associations were found with family and peer relationships in early adolescence. These five romantic relationship patterns appeared to follow a continuum of romantic involvement, with romantic relationship patterns situated a both ends of this continuum (later involvement pattern and intense involvement pattern) being associated with more interpersonal experiences in early adolescence.

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Authors’ contributions

This research was conducted as part of S.B.’s doctoral dissertation. S.B. participated in the coordination of the study, performed the statistical analysis, interpreted the data, and drafted the manuscript. F.P. conceived of the study, its design, its coordination, participated in the interpretation of the data and helped to draft the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Funding

This research was supported by research grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Fonds Québécois pour la Recherche sur la Société et la Culture for the second author. The first author received fundings from the Fonds Québécois pour la recherche sur la Société et Culture.

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  1. Département de psychologie, Université du Québec à Montréal, Succursale Centre-Ville, Case postale 8888, Montreal, QC, H3C 3P8, Canada

    Stéphanie Boisvert & François Poulin

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  1. Stéphanie Boisvert
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  2. François Poulin
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Correspondence to Stéphanie Boisvert.

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This study have been approved by the appropriate institutional research ethics committee. APA human subjects guidelines were followed in the collection of data.

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Boisvert, S., Poulin, F. Romantic Relationship Patterns from Adolescence to Emerging Adulthood: Associations with Family and Peer Experiences in Early Adolescence. J Youth Adolescence 45, 945–958 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-016-0435-0

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