A
new study from the Yale Child Study Center finds that parents can lessen the
effects of inevitable conflict with their teenage children by showing emotional
warmth, and that this can make a difference within the course of a day.
The
article in the scientific journal Emotion, the first study of its kind to examine
fluctuations in how loved teens feel at a daily level, links parents’ displays
of warmth and parents’ perceptions of conflict to daily fluctuations in how
loved their teens were feeling.
Irrespective of the general
closeness of the parent-teen relationships, researchers found that teens
reported feeling more loved on days when parents reported showing more warmth
in the form of affection, understanding, and praise. Likewise, teens reported
feeling less loved on days when parents reported more conflict than usual. More
importantly, the researchers said, they also found that parents can mitigate
the impact of conflict by showing their teen warmth. In other words, on days
when parents were warm, high levels of conflict didn’t reduce how loved teens
felt.
To mitigate conflict, warmth
had to be conveyed on the same day — but the warmth and conflict did not need
to be related, the researchers found.
“Parents often stress about
the conflicts they are experiencing with their children,” said John Coffey of
Yale University, the study’s key author and researcher. “Our study suggests
conflicts are manageable as long as children experience warmth from their
parents at some point during the same day.”
To reach these conclusions,
the researchers collected nightly surveys self-reported by one teen and one
parent from 151 different families. Participating teens were in the 9th and 10th grades, and ranged in age from 13 to 16 years
old. Slightly more female teens participated, and the vast majority (95%) of
participating parents were female. Parents and teens also filled out initial
baseline surveys about how close they were in general.
Teens who reported feeling
generally closer to their parents did on average feel more loved.
“But even if they felt close
to their parents, daily parent-reported conflict and warmth still predicted how
much love a teen felt that day.”” Coffey adds. “The study findings are
particularly useful right now because parents and their children are spending
so much more time together, often with restricted space and under additional
stress. Finding ways to be kind and warm will help mitigate potential conflicts
and ensure children feel loved.”
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