Mother–Child Discrepancy in Perceived Family Funct

Authors: Janet T Y Leung Daniel T L Shek Lin Li

Publish Date: 2016/03/18

Volume: 45, Issue: 10, Pages: 2036-2048

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Abstract

Though growing attention has been devoted to examining informant discrepancies of family attributes in social science research studies that examine how interactions between motherreported and adolescentreported family functioning predict adolescent developmental outcomes in underprivileged families are severely lacking The current study investigated the difference between mothers and adolescents in their reports of family functioning as well as the relationships between motherreported and adolescentreported family functioning and adolescent developmental outcomes in a sample of 432 Chinese singlemother families mean age of adolescents = 137 years 512  girls mean age of mothers = 435 years 699  divorced experiencing economic disadvantage in Hong Kong Polynomial regression analyses were conducted to assess whether discrepancy in family functioning between mother reports and adolescent reports predicted resilience beliefs in the future cognitive competence selfefficacy and selfdetermination of adolescents The results indicated that adolescents reported family functioning more negatively than did their mothers Polynomial regression analyses showed that the interaction term between mothers’ reports and adolescents’ reports of family functioning predicted adolescent developmental outcomes in Chinese singlemother families living in poverty Basically under poor adolescentreported family functioning adolescent development would be relatively better if their mothers reported more positive family functioning In contrast under good adolescentreported family functioning adolescents expressed better developmental outcomes when mothers reported lower levels of family functioning than those mothers who reported higher levels of family functioning The findings provide insights on how congruency and discrepancy between informant reports of family functioning would influence adolescent development Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussedJL conceived of the study participated in its design and coordination and drafted the manuscript DS participated in consultation of the research design interpretation of the data and editing of the manuscript LL participated in performing the statistical analysis helped in interpreting the data and drafting the manuscript All authors read and approved the final manuscript

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