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The first results of the INTRANSITION project are in!

Family relationships during COVID-19

Monika Donker and Stefanos Mastrotheodoros wrote an initial paper based on the INTRANSITION dataset including 240 young adolescent in the final grade of primary school and one of their parents. They found that parents and adolescents reported on average less warmth and involvement in the parent-adolescent relationship during the COVID-19 period compared to before. However, the prevalence of conflicts between parents and adolescents also decreased during this period. The amount of COVID-19-related stress and coping style affected to what extent involvement in the relationship decreased: When parents and adolescents experienced higher levels of stress, and employed active coping strategies, the decrease in involvement was steeper. The preregistration, syntax, and a preprint of this paper can be found on OSF.

Adolescents' autonomy and their relationships with parents and friends

Do adolescents' changes in autonomy affect their relationship with their parents and friends, or do parents and friends have a greater influence on adolescent autonomy? Using INTRANSITION dataset including 244 early adolescents who were in the secondary school transition period, we found that when adolescents were more able to make their own choices, their parents tend to control their child's thoughts and feelings less. However, neither parents nor friends had a direct influence on adolescents' changes in autonomy. These findings imply that adolescents are not always passively influenced by their parents and friends, and that they have agency in shaping their relationships. It is as if adolescents are behind the wheel, and every time they make a turn, their parents adjust their own behavior accordingly.