Relations among Single Mothers’ Awareness of their Adolescents’ Stressors, Maternal Monitoring, Mother-Adolescent Communication, and Adolescent Adjustment

The goal of this study was to examine the relations among mothers’ awareness of their adolescents’ stressors, mother-adolescent communication, maternal monitoring, and adolescent adjustment in single-parent families. Measures of adolescent stress, communication, monitoring, and adolescents’ anxious/depressed and aggressive behaviors were completed by 82 adolescents and their single mothers. The findings indicated that single mothers were aware of about half of their adolescents’ stressors and not as aware of the importance to their adolescents. Adolescents in the group characterized by high stress/low agreement reported more problem behaviors. Moreover, monitoring mediated the relationship between awareness group membership and adolescent adjustment as high agreement groups reported more monitoring and fewer problem behaviors than did low agreement groups. Thus, during early adolescence when adolescent stress increases and family communication and monitoring change, monitoring by single mothers may increase awareness of adolescent stress, which in turn may buffer the negative effects of stress on adolescent adjustment.

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