Adolescent functioning : communication and the buffering of parental anger

Although high levels of anger and low levels of parental agreement are generally associated with poor adolescent functioning, this may not always be the case. In particular, from the child's perspective, when one parent is angry on a large number of issues, parental agreement may be dysfunctional because the second parent is unavailable to buffer the stress produced by the first parent. When the level of parental anger about parent–child issues is low, higher levels of parental agreement may serve to clarify for the child which issues are important. Seventy boys and 77 girls indicated the extent and level of anger with which each of 44 issues was discussed with each parent. Teachers' ratings, school records, and self-reported depression were organized into a set of internalizing problems, externalizing problems, and role performance. For boys, but not for girls, the predicted interaction of perceived parental anger and perceived parental agreement was significant on measures from each class of dependent v...