Parental attachment and adolescents' emotional adjustment: The associations with social skills and relational competence

Young people learn from their interactions with their parents how to initiate and maintain satisfying and warm friendships. Attachment with parents thereby plays an important role in adolescents' social and emotional adjustment. The model tested in this study proposes that the relation between parental attachment and emotional adjustment is mediated by social skills and relational competence. Structural equation modeling was used to estimate the models and paths between concepts using data from a sample of 412 12-18-year-olds. In the 12-14-year-old age group, no effects of parental attachment on social skills and relational competence were displayed. However, in the 15-18-year-old age group, parental attachment was moderately related to social skills, which, in turn, affected middle adolescents' competence in friendships and romantic relationships. Parental attachment and relational competence were significant predictors of adolescents' emotional adjustment in both age groups.