van Rijn–van Gelderen, L., Schulz, S., Neervoort, N., Branje, S., & Overbeek, G. (2025). “Children will Love Like You Do”: How Adolescents’ Relationships with Parents Predict the Quality of Best Friendships and Romantic Relations. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 1-12.

 What They Did

The researchers carried out two studies of the connections among adolescent relationship quality with parents, friends, and romantic partners: one study included adolescents aged 12 to 16, and the other included adolescents aged 15 to 22. In both cases, the studies were longitudinal, with questions about parent relationships the first year, about friendship the second year, and about romantic relationships the third year. Only responses of participants who were in romantic relationships the third year were included in the analysis.

 For the younger adolescents, the researchers found that the quality of the relationship with one parent was correlated with the relationship quality for the other parent. They also found that participants who reported a good relationship with a friend in the second year of the study were likely to also report a good relationship with a romantic partner in the third year. (Relationship quality with parents did not predict later relationship quality with friends or romantic partners.) For the older adolescents, relationship quality was correlated over all four relationship pairs: participants who reported that one relationship was good were more likely to report positively on each of the other relationship types in future years.

The researchers speculate that the correlations between parental relationship quality and friendship or romantic relationship quality may be stronger in older adolescents because those relationships are likely to be closer and more committed than those of younger adolescents. It may be only in those more “serious” relationships that the parental relationships function as models for adolescents.

Further Exploration

The studies have some limitations, which the researchers discuss transparently. One element that caught my eye, however, and was not addressed in the article was how the parental relationship scale worked for adolescents with two same-gender parents. My best guess is that they answered the questions based on their relationship with the biological parent of the relevant gender, but I really don’t know.

The two groups also had different scales used to assess relationship quality. The younger group completed the surveys at school, while the older group did so at home. The older adolescents also received money for participating. The younger adolescents, meanwhile, completed the surveys during the school day, replacing their regular class.

Those differences may have affected the responses. The older adolescents may have appreciated being paid and therefore been happier, leading them to rate their relationships more highly. The younger ones may or may not have enjoyed having the survey activity replace their regular class, and this could also have an effect. The older group may have been more comfortable at home, leading to higher ratings, or they could have been uncomfortable having a stranger in their home, which may have caused lower ratings. It’s also conceivable that the younger adolescents at school were more primed to think about their friendships and romantic relationships and the older ones at home were more primed to think about their parental relationships. One could potentially design a study to examine these possibilities, but that’s a rabbit hole for another day!

Image credit: Public domain

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Drawn_love_hearts.svg