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Parental military service and adolescent mental and behavioral health: the role of adolescent-civilian parent interactions
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Parental military service and adolescent mental and behavioral health: the role of adolescent-civilian parent interactions
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1!
Parental Military Service and Adolescent Mental and Behavioral Health:
The Role of Adolescent-Civilian Parent Interactions
Aubrey J. Rodriguez
Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology
August 2016
2
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments ..........................................................................................................................4
General Introduction .....................................................................................................................6
Manuscript 1: Military service absences and family member mental health ...............................14
Abstract ..............................................................................................................................15
Introduction ........................................................................................................................16
Methods..............................................................................................................................20
Results ................................................................................................................................24
Discussion ..........................................................................................................................26
References ..........................................................................................................................30
Table 1. Descriptive Statistics and Bivariate Correlations .........................................32
Table 2. Hierarchical Regression Analyses .................................................................33
Figure 1. Sample of One Year of a Family Timeline ...................................................34
Figure 2. Contact Frequency Moderates Effect of Time Away on Youth Anxiety .......35
Manuscript 2: Adolescent-to-civilian parent support and youth depression symptoms ..............36
Abstract ..............................................................................................................................37
Introduction ........................................................................................................................38
Methods..............................................................................................................................43
Results ................................................................................................................................49
Discussion ..........................................................................................................................52
References ..........................................................................................................................61
Table 1. Item-Level Descriptives for Adolescents’ Self-Reported Support ..................66
Table 2. Descriptive Statistics for Continuous Study Variables ..................................67
3
Table 3. Bivariate Associations Among Continuous Study Variables .........................68
Table 4. Mean Differences Between Demographic Groups - Continuous Variables ..69
Figure 1. Final Model of Associations ........................................................................70
Figure 2. Moderation by Mothers’ Depression Symptoms ..........................................71
Manuscript 3: Spillover via mother’s negative emotional talk to adolescent symptoms ............72
Abstract ..............................................................................................................................73
Introduction ........................................................................................................................74
Methods..............................................................................................................................80
Results ................................................................................................................................85
Discussion ..........................................................................................................................87
References ..........................................................................................................................93
Table 1. Descriptives for Raw Study Variables .........................................................101
Table 2. Bivariate Pearson Correlations Among Study Variables ............................102
Figure 1. Hypothesized Path Model ..........................................................................103
Figure 2. Final Path Model .......................................................................................104
General Discussion .....................................................................................................................105
References for General Introduction and General Discussion ..............................................109
Appendices ..................................................................................................................................112
Timeline Followback Military Family Interview Forms .................................................113
Youth Self-Report Questionnaires ...................................................................................116
Parent Self-Report Questionnaire ....................................................................................123
Observational Coding Manual and Coder Rating Form ..................................................129
4
Acknowledgments
The research described in this dissertation was supported by the National Institute of
Mental Health [Grant NRSA F31 MH094035], the Fahs-Beck Fund for Research and
Experimentation [Dissertation Research Award], the American Psychological Foundation [2014
Randy Gerson Memorial Grant]. Thank you for entrusting me with the means to investigate these
questions and to pursue excellence in my training as a clinical psychological scientist.
I also extend my gratitude to my dissertation guidance committee members, Drs. Julie
Cederbaum, Jo Ann Farver, Margaret Gatz, and Steve Lopez for their support and their curiosity
about these issues, which pushed me to simultaneously think broadly and carefully. Thanks are
also due to the members of the USC Family Studies Project laboratory for their insights,
collaboration on this and other projects, and frequent cheerleading: Dr. Michelle Ramos, Dr.
Darby Saxbe, Dr. Brian Baucom, Dr. Reout Arbel, Dr. Lauren Spies Shapiro, Dr. Estibaliz
Iturralde, Ilana Kellerman Moss, Larissa Del Piero, Adela Timmons, Claire Burgess, Kelly
Miller, and Sohyun Han. The undergraduate and post-baccalaureate research assistants who
volunteered for the USC Military Families Study made this project possible in immeasurable
day-to-day ways, and helped me to develop new skills in project and personnel management and
mentoring – you all have inspired me with your dedication and your intellectual brilliance: Mary
Letourneau, Corey Pettit, Linda Tsui, Neil Jariwalla, Alyssa Kennedy, Nicolette Conte, Maxine
De Luna, Kevin Bera, Claudia Aguirre, Gail Montag, and Jose Calderon.
To the personnel at the Naval Medical Center San Diego and at the Marine Corps Air
Ground Combat Center (MCAGCC) Twentynine Palms, as well as various military community
contacts throughout Southern California – from Ventura to San Diego – thank you for your
assistance in getting word out about our study and directing interested families our way.
5
To the military families who were willing to spend several hours with me and allow me a
window into their lives and relationships, I am humbled by the many ways that you have chosen
to serve others and I pray that this work communicates your strengths and your struggles with
full integrity.
To Dr. Gayla Margolin, my dissertation chair, research advisor, and mentor – I am hard
pressed to think of a single skill or competence that I have developed during the past eight (!)
years of graduate training that I have not first observed and admired in you. Thank you for
coming alongside me as a naïve recent college grad and newlywed and seeing me through the
many professional and personal transitions of this formative almost-decade in my life. Your
belief in me, and your unwillingness to let me settle for less than my best, allowed me to stay the
course.
And finally, to my own family – who endured more than their share of (very) temporary
spouse/parent absences to allow me to study this phenomenon in other families – thank you.
Eleon, as you well know, this has always been a “we” thing and not a “me” thing and I hope you
are proud of all that we accomplished; thank you for always being my biggest fan and
occasionally being my toughest evaluator. Benaiah and Amita – you are my joy and becoming
and being your mom has been one of the sweetest experiences in my life. Mom, Dad, and Dan –
thanks for being supportive even when you weren’t sure what in the world I was talking about
(and thanks for not making me feel like I was crazy even when I made no sense to you).
Soli Deo Gloria
!
6
General Introduction
Active duty military service exerts particular demands upon family members of military
personnel to adapt to transitions within and outside the family: uncertainty about the occurrence
and timing of separations; renegotiations of family roles, responsibilities, and relational
boundaries; and the potential loss of external social and material resources (Boss, 2002; Faber,
Willerton, Clymer, MacDermid & Weiss, 2008). Not surprisingly, deployment is an acute
stressful event incurring risk not just for the service member but is also associated with mental
health problems for other family members—both the civilian spouse and children (e.g., Chandra
et al., 2010; Flake et al., 2009; Lester et al., 2010; Mansfield, Kaufman, Engel, & Gaynes, 2011).
By and large, however, the issue of exactly how the service member’s activities affect other
family members is not well understood. My research represented here addresses the question of
how military service affects family systems, as contrasted with individual family members.
Specifically, for many modern military families service-connected absences – including but not
limited to deployment – are recurrent periods of temporary parent absence that require
substantial and repeated reorganization of family relationship processes. With a focus on the
civilian mother and adolescent youth, I investigate the role of family relationship processes—as
potential sources of risk and resilience—in military families.
Military Service as a Specific Case of Recurrent Temporary Parent Absence
In a more comprehensive and systematic review of the phenomenon of temporary parent
absence within families (Rodriguez & Margolin, 2015), I previously discussed family processes
characterized in the extant literatures during periods of temporary parent absence due to
incarceration, transnational migration, and military deployment. This review highlighted changes
in family processes during periods of temporary parent absence, including seeking versus
7
limiting contact, a shift towards harshness/negativity and away from support/positivity in the at-
home parent-child relationship, and changes particularly in youth taking on new or increased
instrumental and emotional responsibilities. Importantly, due to the temporariness of these
family separations and the recurrent nature of deployment and training absences that characterize
military service, families must make continuing adjustments to family life with and without the
service member present. Beyond the current project, few studies have assessed military
separations as a chronic stressor or assessed the possibility that this recurrence has distinct
consequences for family relationship processes.
Theoretical Perspectives on Family Adaptation to Temporary Military Service Absences
From a theoretical perspective, military service has been conceptualized as an ambiguous
loss, including periods of both ambiguous presence – during which the service member is
physically present in the family system but psychologically absent, such as when preparing to
deploy or upon return – and ambiguous absence – physical absence during which family
members strive to keep the service member psychologically present within the family system
(Wiens & Boss, 2006). Some evidence exists to support ambiguous loss theory predictions that
military families do experience boundary ambiguity, and struggle to define family roles and
distribute responsibilities (Faber et al., 2008). However, most empirical investigations of
ambiguous loss have confined their inquiry to qualitative methods that assess the phenomenon of
ambiguity as it is experienced and perceived by individual family members; these constructs
have been less successfully mapped onto observable family relationship processes.
Family systems theory provides a context in which to assess the interrelations among
family members and family subsystems (e.g., marital and parent-child relationships) and
mechanisms by which experiences of stress or strain within one family member (or one family
8
relationship) reverberate throughout the entire system. These spillover processes (see Saxbe,
Rodriguez, & Margolin, 2012) within family life have been described related to both stress
originating from outside the family (e.g., due to parent work demands; Repetti, 1994; Repetti &
Wood, 1997) as well as distress within family relationships (e.g., marital distress and aggression;
Margolin, Gordis, & Oliver, 2004). Researchers have argued that these stressors particularly tax
the psychological resources of parents, thereby compromising the quality and reliability of
parenting (Benson, Buehler, & Gerard, 2008; Davies & Cummings, 1998). Though existing work
on military families documents higher rates of affective and behavioral problems among children
whose non-military parent reports high levels of distress (Chandra et al., 2010; Flake et al., 2009;
Jensen, Martin, & Watanabe, 1996; Lester et al., 2010), these studies have suggested only co-
occurrence of family member distress and have not yet evaluated parent or child behaviors that
suggest a process of spillover or emotion transmission. As such, little evidence exists to
differentiate spillover hypotheses from competing explanations, including (1) that family
members are merely reacting similarly to a shared stressor or (2) that, in single-reporter designs,
an individual’s ratings are more reflective of his or her mood than true similarity in family
member responses.
Observational Assessment of Military Family Relationship Process
Of central importance from a clinical perspective is the paucity of research on the
proximal mechanisms of family communication that are posited to stimulate, transmit, and
maintain family distress. Importantly, these communication dimensions are the same processes
typically targeted by family prevention and intervention efforts in psychotherapeutic contexts.
Only two studies to date (Brockman et al., 2016; Davis, Hanson, Zamir, Gewirtz, & DeGarmo,
2015) have utilized observational behavioral assessment of military families, but have focused
9
on service members’ parenting behavior. These studies link service members’ avoidance of
unwanted internal experience (e.g., thoughts/feelings; a common feature of PTSD) to less
positive parenting engagement (e.g., affection, responsiveness) and more avoidance of family
members’ distress (Brockman et al., 2016) and service members’ number of months deployed to
less effective parenting behaviors (e.g., more harsh discipline, less problem solving and positive
affective engagement; Davis et al., 2015). However, these studies report on a sample of National
Guard and Reserve families, for whom military service is not a primary occupation and who face
different challenges from active duty populations. As such, these studies do not help to answer
broader questions about the impacts of an extended history of temporary parent absence on
family process. Moreover, both of these reports focus directly on parenting behaviors employed
by the service member, whereas the current project focuses on alterations within the civilian
parent-adolescent child relationship.
Parent-child relationship processes are particularly important to assess during the critical
developmental period of adolescence. First, risk for developing mental and behavioral health
problems increases following puberty (Lewinsohn, Hops, Roberts, Seeley, & Andrews, 1993),
which suggests that adolescents may be more biologically vulnerable than younger children. In
addition, at this developmental stage youth are involved in negotiating autonomy and separation
from their families of origin, and these normative individuation processes may be disrupted (e.g.,
slowed, accelerated, or fraught with anxiety or other difficult emotions) by family
reorganizations related to military service absence. Relatedly, these youth may possess the skills
and maturity to engage more fully in the tasks of managing day-to-day family life (e.g., driving
siblings to school, preparing meals) and may differ from younger children in both their perceived
responsibility to solve family problems on the one hand, and self-efficacy to implement solutions
10
on the other. Finally, due to these normal developmental shifts, adolescents may engage in a
wider range of behaviors during parent-child discussions than do younger children, whose
involvement in such discussions is often restricted to compliance or noncompliance with parental
requests.
Aims of Overall Project and Focus of Individual Manuscripts
The overarching aim of the current dissertation is to identify impacts of repeated
temporary parent absences due to military service on family members and family relationship
processes; I focus on potentially modifiable mechanisms of risk and of resilience that are evident
in family communication patterns. In this program of research, conversations between the
civilian mother and adolescent child are utilized as a proximal context to assess mechanisms of
spillover and emotion transmission. The project involved recruitment of a sample of 80 mother-
adolescent dyads from active-duty military families residing in Southern California. Families
participated in a 2 1/2 hour in-home data collection procedure, which included (1) a 45-minute
calendar-assisted interview detailing the extent of service member absence and family member
experiences absence over the previous five years, (2) a 10-minute videotaped mother-adolescent
discussion about their experiences as a military family, and (3) completion of self-report
questionnaires on individual and relational functioning. Three related studies are presented which
assess elements of the overall conceptual model below (Figure 1).
Two specific aims guided the inquiry for the project:
Specific Aim 1: To investigate the associations between a history of temporary
father absence and the mental and behavioral health of the civilian parent and
adolescent child.
11
Specific Aim 2: To investigate parent-adolescent communication behaviors as
mechanisms (i.e., mediators or moderators) associating temporary father
absence, civilian parent mental/behavioral health, and adolescent
mental/behavioral health
The first of the three manuscripts assessed Specific Aim 1, whereas manuscripts 2 and 3
address Specific Aim 2, with the former manuscript focusing on behaviors flowing from
adolescent to mother and the latter focusing on communication behaviors flowing from
mother to adolescent.
Figure 1. Overall Conceptual Model Depicting Hypothesized Patterns of Association Among
Absence Exposure, Family Process, and Family Member Mental Health
Manuscript 1: Temporary Military Absence and Family Member Mental Health
The first study, “Military service absences and family members’ mental health: A
timeline followback assessment” (published August 2015 in Journal of Family Psychology),
establishes the Timeline Followback Military Family Interview (TFMFI) method for assessing
B
C
E
A
F
D
History of
Temporary Father
Absence
Mother-Adolescent
Communication
Mother Mental
Health
Adolescent Mental
Health
12
family members’ experiences of temporary father absence during the previous five years. In
addition to describing this methodology, this first manuscript assesses associations between two
absence indices (cumulative time away, family events missed) and mother and youth symptoms
of depression and anxiety (paths B & D in Figure 1). We also expanded this model by exploring
father-youth contact frequency during the most recent deployment absence as a moderator of the
association between father absence and youth symptoms (path D).
Manuscript 2: Youth-to-Mother Support Processes and Youth Depression Symptoms
The second study, “Stepping up, sticking together: Military adolescents’ support of their
civilian parents and concurrent depression symptoms” provides a nuanced look at youth-to-
mother supportive behaviors and their association with adolescent depression symptoms (path E
in Figure 1). In this investigation, youth-to-mother support was assessed via (1) observationally
coded youth behaviors in a discussion about military experiences and (2) youth self-report of
recent helping behaviors. This study departs from the broader literature on family processes,
which typically focus on the role of parent behavior, to examine the influence of the adolescent’s
own behaviors towards parent on his or her psychosocial risk; this study thus highlights central
questions regarding the intersection of pressures of adolescent development (e.g., autonomy or
“stepping out”) and processes of family adaptation to external demands (e.g., interdependence or
“stepping up”). The paper also investigates whether associations between youth supportive
behaviors and youth depression are influenced by mothers’ distress and by shared family stress
due to military demands.
Manuscript 3: Mother Symptoms and Mother-to-Youth Negative Emotion as Mediators of
the Impacts of Absence on Youth
The third and final study, “Spillover within the military family: Mothers’ negative
13
emotional talk as a link to adolescents’ mental health” provides a preliminary examination of the
overall model for the project (Figure 1). This study assesses the indirect effect of temporary
father absence on adolescent symptoms via mother symptoms and mother negative emotional
communication during a discussion about the family’s military experiences. The study employs a
unique linguistically based measure which separates emotion content from emotion process, and
allows for the evaluation of the affective tone of mother communication without relying on the
subjective perceptions of human coders. Analytically, it tests possible direct effects of father
absence and alternatively, whether the cumulative effect of temporary father absence is mediated
via spillover processes involving mothers-to-youth emotional communication.
Together, these studies start to identify ways that active-duty military service of one
parent intersects with ongoing and everyday normative family processes of the civilian parent
and adolescent youth.
14
Military Service Absences and Family Members’ Mental Health:
A Timeline Followback Assessment
Aubrey J. Rodriguez & Gayla Margolin
University of Southern California
As Published in August 2016 Issue of
Journal of Family Psychology
15
Abstract
Though military service, and particularly absence due to deployment, has been linked to
risk for depression and anxiety among some spouses and children of active duty service
members, there is limited research to explain the heterogeneity in family members’ reactions to
military service stressors. The current investigation introduces the Timeline Followback Military
Family Interview (TFMFI) as a clinically useful strategy to collect detailed time-linked
information about the service member’s absences. Two dimensions of parent absence—the
extent to which absences coincide with important family events and cumulative time absent—
were tested as potential risks to family members’ mental health. Data from 70 mother-adolescent
pairs revealed that the number of important family events missed by the service member was
linked to elevated youth symptoms of depression, even when accounting for the number of
deployments and cumulative duration of the service member’s absence. However, youth who
reported more frequent contact with the service member during absences were buffered from the
effects of extensive absence. Mothers’ symptoms were associated with the cumulative duration
of the service members’ time away, but not with family events missed by the service member.
These results identify circumstances that increase the risk for mental health symptoms associated
with military family life. The TFMFI provides an interview-based strategy for clinicians wishing
to understand military family members’ lived experience during periods of service member
absence.
Keywords: military families, military children, deployment, parent absence
16
Introduction
One parent’s absence from family life is known to be potentially stressful for at-home
family members and may be related to their symptoms of psychosocial distress. However, the
type of absence (e.g., military service, imprisonment, migration, or divorce) can have different
meanings for family members, which thus influence the way family members think about and
react to the absence (Rodriguez & Margolin, 2015). Several salient features of absence due to
military service include the potential for harm to the service member, honorable motivations to
protect and serve the family and the nation, and somewhat unpredictable departures and returns.
Even among military families, however, there is considerable variability in anticipated dangers,
the amount of contact during absence, and the extent to which service members may discuss their
activities. In contrast to previous literature linking family members’ psychological problems to
objective indices of military service (e.g., number and length of deployments; Lester et al.,
2010), this study represents an early attempt to consider family members’ own experiences
during the service member’s absence. We introduce a military service timeline interview used to
reconstruct, over the prior 5 years, the total months of absence and the co-occurrence of the
service member’s absence with important family events. We test hypotheses that (a) service
members’ cumulative time away and missed family events are associated with symptoms of
anxiety and depression for mothers and adolescent youth and (b) amount of contact between the
service member and the family moderates the impact of these absence dimensions.
Service Member Absence and Family Members’ Symptoms
The service member’s absence, as it relates to family members’ functioning, has
generally been quantified in two ways—number of deployments and cumulative time that the
service member has been deployed. Number of deployments and number of months of combat
17
deployment have each been associated with elevated psychosocial symptoms and mental health
diagnoses for youth (Barker & Berry, 2009; Lester et al., 2010; Mansfield, Kaufman, Engel, &
Gaynes, 2011) and military spouses (Lester et al., 2010; Mansfield, et al., 2010). Several studies,
however, fail to find associations between these absence variables and family members’
adjustment (Chandra et al., 2010; Flake et al., 2009; Morris & Age, 2009). The mixed nature of
these findings hints at variability in the nature of deployment absences as well as families’
subjective experiences of those absences.
Notably, the mere frequency of departures and the passage of time do not speak to the
fabric of families’ lives during absence, nor do these dimensions describe the impact of the
service member’s absence from that shared life. For families who experience major life stressors
or transitions (e.g., death of a relative, job loss, residential moves) during absences, the service
member’s instrumental and emotional support will likely be deeply missed as family members
attempt to cope. On the other hand, the service member’s absence from celebratory family events
and life transitions (e.g., anniversaries, children graduating high school or college) may evoke
feelings of loss. Qualitative data have described youths’ sadness about service member parents
missing events or achievements (Mmari, Roche, Sudhinaraset, & Blum, 2009), but the extent to
which the service member’s absence from these events is associated with family member
symptoms is unknown. More generally, missed events might also evoke complicated emotional
reactions, including anger at the service member’s unavailability and perhaps guilt at enjoying
happy events during the service member’s absence. Additionally, for military families, as well as
other families who endure temporary parent absence, each absence calls for a degree of
reorganization of the rhythms and responsibilities of family life (see Rodriguez & Margolin,
2015). To the extent that major stressful life events or rites of passage occur within a family
18
during an absence, these demands for reorganization may be amplified.
A related consideration is whether deployment absence influences family members’
psychosocial symptoms uniquely, relative to general military service absence. Though recent
changes in operational tempo (i.e., high rates of re-deployment, short “dwell times” between
deployments) understandably motivates assessment of the impact of deployment on spouses and
youth, research has overlooked other common causes of military parent absence due, for
example, to: trainings and schools for advancement or skill acquisition, pre-deployment
workups, and temporary duty assignments (e.g., conducting equipment inspections at another
base). These absences may also intersect with important family experiences, leading family
members to accumulate feelings of stress or loss. In assessing the impact of dimensions of
absence – the number of absences, cumulative duration of absence, and the number of co-
occurring significant family events – we also include the many types of absence that characterize
military careers by counting months of cumulative absence due to the varied demands of military
service.
The Role of Frequency of Contact with Service Member
Modern technologies may facilitate communication between the service member and
family members during service-related absences; however, the impacts of this contact (i.e.,
frequency, medium, quality, content, etc.) are only beginning to be understood. To the extent that
the service member is able to provide support for family members or share in their lives from a
distance, the literature on temporary parent absence suggests this contact would be associated
with positive outcomes for at-home family members (see Rodriguez & Margolin, 2015).
Alternatively, periodic contact might remind at-home family members how much they miss the
service member and might disrupt new patterns and routines the family has established.
19
Interestingly, preliminary investigations of contact in military families have linked more frequent
youth-service member contact with elevated youth psychosocial stress and more frequent
spouse-service member email contact with elevated spouse subjective distress (Houston,
Pfefferbaum, Sherman, Melson, & Brand, 2013). Perhaps contact induces emotional distress, or
more distressed family members seek reassurance by increasing contact. However, studies in this
new literature have thus far assessed only main effects of communication on family member
functioning whereas the present study investigates the possibility that contact might moderate the
effects of specific absence variables on family member functioning, with either a buffering or
intensifying effect on symptoms.
The Present Study
The present study introduces the Timeline Followback Military Family Interview
(TFMFI) to collect precise information on salient family events over the past 5 years and how
those events coincided with the service member’s absences from the family. This procedure,
which is adapted from the substance use literature (Fals-Stewart, O'Farrell, Freitas, McFarlin, &
Rutigliano, 2000; Sobell & Sobell, 1992), makes use of a calendar and key dates to serve as
anchors and memory aids to obtain retrospective estimates of a specific behavior over a specified
time period. The goal here is to assess two absence dimensions – total cumulative time of
absence related to military service (i.e., deployments, trainings, duty assignments), and number
of missed family events during absences. We hypothesize that these more nuanced measures of
absence will better capture the implications of the service member’s absence and thus will
account for significant additional variance, over number of deployments, in mother and youth
symptoms of depression and anxiety (Hypothesis 1). We also anticipate that the frequency of
contact with the service member will moderate the impact of service member absence on family
20
members’ symptoms; we are testing this as a non-directional hypothesis as it is an open question
whether contact heightens or lessens the psychological symptoms associated with absence
(Hypothesis 2).
Method
Participants
The current study assessed 70 mother-adolescent dyads from United States military
families living in Southern California. Dyads were eligible if they had: (a) a father/husband
serving on active duty, (b) a mother not currently on active duty, (c) a child aged 14-18, and (d)
ability to complete study measures in English. Families were recruited through advertisements in
military newsletters/social media/websites; announcements via family readiness, school liaison,
and military housing personnel; flyers posted – with permission from the Naval Medical Center
and local commands – in base hospitals/clinics; and referrals from study participants for a study
of “the challenges and benefits of military family life”. Of 123 families who initially contacted
us, 70 families (56.9%) completed all study procedures; 20.3% (n = 25) did not meet eligibility
requirements, 13.8% (n = 17) did not respond to our contact attempts following their initial
inquiry, and 8.9% (n = 11) declined to participate. The most common reasons for declining
participation were difficulty scheduling (n = 6) and not wishing to be videotaped (n = 2).
Participating youth (n = 38 female) ranged in age from 14.0 to 18.9 (M = 16.0, SD = 1.2).
About a third of youth and mothers self-identified as Hispanic/Latino (31.4%). In terms of race,
64.3% self-identified as White/Caucasian, 4.3% as American Indian or Alaska Native, 2.1% as
Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, 2.9% as Asian, 5.7% as Black, and 20.7% as multiracial or
other. Mothers’ average age was 39.9 (SD = 4.8, range = 31.6-53.0). Ninety percent of mothers
had attended some college, and 40% had completed a bachelor’s degree or equivalent; 31.4%
21
worked for pay outside the home.
In over one-third of participant families (34.3%, n = 24), the service member was the
youth’s stepfather; among these families, the youth reported an average of 10.9 years of co-
residence with the service member (SD = 4.0, range = 4.0-17.5). All but one mother was
biologically related to the target youth. All target youth and their service member father or
stepfather shared a primary residence. Families averaged 2.8 children in the home (SD = 1.0,
range = 1-6), including the target youth, and the majority of target youth was eldest child
(85.7%). Fifty-three percent of families were living in military housing (either on a military
installation or in an off-base military housing community). Service member parents were serving
in the U.S. Marine Corps (52.9%), Navy (34.3%), Air Force (8.6%), Army (2.9%) and Coast
Guard (1.6%). In our sample, 25.7% of service members were mid-grade enlisted personnel,
40.0% were senior enlisted, 18.6% were junior officers, and 15.7% were senior officers. Service
members had deployed an average of 4.0 times during their careers (SD = 3.1, range 0-15). Four
service members had never deployed, and three were deployed at the time of the interview.
Eleven mothers were veterans/retirees of the U.S. military.
Procedures
Mother-adolescent dyads were assessed in a 2 1/2 hour meeting in their homes without
the presence of the service member. The University Institutional Review Board approved study
procedures, and participants provided written informed consent/assent. The TFMFI was
conducted simultaneously with both the mother and youth, was video-recorded and lasted about
45 minutes. Calendars for each of the past five years were used to prompt the family members’
memories about the service member’s deployments or other military related absences and other
important family events (e.g., births, deaths, moves, etc.). The calendars were used flexibly and
22
iteratively in the interview; families who could recall the service member’s absences clearly
placed these on the calendar first and then filled in family events, whereas other families
identified service member absences by first identifying key family events. Figure 1 shows a one-
year sample of a fictitious but representative family time line. When the timeline was nearly
complete, the experimenter queried about whether other important family events occurred during
identified service member absences. The experimenter made sure that both the mother and youth
contributed to the completion of the timeline, and the discussion between family members
allowed them to prompt one another’s recall, which resulted in more comprehensive information.
Each videotaped interview was reviewed by a trained undergraduate research assistant to double-
check the accuracy of the information recorded on the calendars and standardized forms.
We additionally assessed the mother’s and adolescent’s private reports of mental health
symptoms and general adjustment by having each family member independently complete
questionnaires on laptop computers that we provided.
Measures
Number of Recent Deployments. We counted the service member’s deployments during
the previous five years, as indicated by the TFMFI procedure.
Service Member’s Cumulative Time Away. Using the calendar portion of TFMFI, we
first calculated the total time (in months) the service member had spent away from the family
due to deployment, temporary duty assignment, or training during the previous five years.
Important Family Events Missed. Drawing on both objective and subjective responses to
TFMFI questions, we used the recorded interviews and the notations on calendar to ‘count’ the
number of significant family life events the dyad reported the service member had missed during
periods of absence. The following ten types of events, which are potentially disruptive to the
23
family’s established patterns, were included in this measure: pregnancy/birth/adoption (reported
by 24.3% in the past 5 years), death (38.6%), wedding (24.3%), graduation (from a school, not
completion of a school year; 40.0%), residential move (31.4%), family member moving in
(12.9%) or out of the service member’s home (10.0%), divorce/marital separation of family
member (11.4%), serious illness/injury/hospitalization (54.3%), child(ren) beginning school year
(72.9%), and job loss (10.0%). We only counted residential moves, children beginning school
year, and job loss for the nuclear family; other events could involve extended family members.
Contact Frequency. Each participant answered the following question about their
frequency of contact with the service member during the most recent deployment: “How often
did you communicate with your spouse/parent?” Participants indicated contact frequency on a
six-point ordinal scale: (0) Never, (1) Once a month, (2) Once a week, (3) 2-3 times a week, (4)
Once a day, or (5) Several times a day. Mothers reported significantly more contact with the
service member (M = 3.39) than did youth (M
Youth
= 2.52), paired t(63) = 5.23, p < .001.
Youth Internalizing Symptoms. Youth completed a 26-item version of the Children’s
Depression Inventory (CDI; Kovacs, 1992); due to ethical/reporting concerns, the suicidal
ideation item was excluded (Cronbach’s α = .83). Youth also completed the 47-item Revised
Children’s Anxiety and Depression Scale (RCADS; Chorpita et al., 2000); the 37 items assessing
anxiety symptoms across five DSM-IV-TR anxiety disorders were used here (α = .93).
Participants were permitted to skip any items they preferred not to answer; 49 CDI items were
skipped (2.7%) across 28 youth and 18 RCADS items (0.7%) were skipped across 11 youth.
Mean imputation was done at the subscale level to create participants’ total scores.
Mother Internalizing Symptoms. Mothers reported their anxiety symptoms on the 21-
item Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI; Beck, Epstein, Brown, & Steer, 1988) and their symptoms of
24
depression using a 20-item version of the Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II; Beck, 1996),
with the omission of the suicidal ideation item. Internal consistency in this sample for the BAI
and BDI-II were α = .92 and .93 respectively. As with youth, we used mean imputation for
missing data (0.5% of the BAI and 1.4% of the BDI).
Analytic Plan
We first screened the following potential covariates by assessing their bivariate
correlations with mother and youth symptoms: youth gender, youth age, youth birth order,
mother age, mother veteran status, service member rank, and stepfamily status. Stepfamily status
was significantly associated with youth outcomes, and was retained as a covariate in youth
models. Service member rank was significantly associated with mothers’ symptoms, and was
retained as a covariate in those models. We ran parallel hierarchical multiple regression models
for mothers and youth and separately for anxiety and depression. Covariates were entered in step
1 (number of recent deployments, rank [for mothers], and stepfamily status [for youth]), and
absence variables (cumulative time away and events missed) were entered at step 2. In follow-up
analyses assessing contact frequency as a moderator of the impacts of absence variables, the
contact term and interaction term were added at step 3.
Results
Table 1 presents descriptives and bivariate Pearson correlations for the study variables.
As expected, our indices of absence – number of recent deployments, cumulative time away, and
number of important family events missed – were all moderately positively associated (rs = .27-
.33). Cumulative time away was positively associated with mothers’ depression and anxiety
symptoms, but was not associated with youth symptoms; number of important family events
missed was positively associated with mothers’ depression symptoms and marginally associated
25
with the youth’s depression symptoms. Number of recent deployments was, unexpectedly,
inversely related to youth anxiety symptoms. Service member rank was inversely associated with
mothers’ anxiety symptoms. Youth contact frequency was marginally inversely associated with
youth symptoms but not significantly associated with any study variables. Symptoms of anxiety
and depression were strongly correlated for mothers and for youth.
Effects of Dimensions of Absence on Family Members’ Symptoms
Table 2 presents the regression analyses for mothers’ and youths’ symptoms related to
the two absence variables. For youth, as hypothesized, the number of important family events
missed was associated with elevated youth symptoms of depression even when accounting for
the influence of stepfamily status, and duration and frequency of absence. Youth in stepfamilies
also showed significantly lower levels of depressive symptoms. By contrast, only the number of
recent deployments was uniquely associated with youth anxiety symptoms, although not in the
expected direction; higher number of deployments was linked with lower youth-reported anxiety.
Models for mothers’ symptoms showed similar patterns of results across anxiety and
depression symptom clusters. Cumulative time away was positively associated with symptoms of
both depression and anxiety, whereas missed events were not associated. Service member rank
was negatively associated with mothers’ anxiety.
Frequency of Contact Moderates Impacts of Absence
We then tested the hypothesis that contact with the service member would moderate the
impact of absence on family members’ symptoms. For youth, frequency of contact moderated
the effect of cumulative duration of recent absence on youth anxiety, B = -.42, t = -3.14, p =
.003. At low (i.e., M - 1SD) levels of contact, the association between cumulative time away and
youth anxiety was positive, B = 2.41, t = 3.20, p = .002; at high levels of contact (i.e., M + 1SD),
26
the association between cumulative time away and anxiety was negative, B = -.55, t = -2.34, p =
.023 (see Supplemental Figure 1). Thus, more frequent contact with the service member appears
buffer youth against anxiety due to periodic parent absence. No other significant interactions
between contact frequency and absence variables emerged for youth or mothers.
Discussion
This study introduces the Timeline Followback Military Family Interview (TFMFI), to
operationalize two dimensions of parental absence: important family events that coincided with
absence and total cumulative time away. In support of Hypothesis 1, this more nuanced
examination of the impact of service members’ absence revealed that the number of important
family events missed was associated with elevated youth depression symptoms, even after
accounting for the number of recent deployments and cumulative duration of absence;
cumulative duration of absence was associated with mothers’ elevated symptoms of depression
and anxiety. In partial support of Hypothesis 2, more frequent contact with the service member
buffered youth from anxiety symptoms in the face of more extensive durations of absence.
This study provides an important preliminary look at variables that may explain the
impact of periodic service member absence on family members’ mental health symptoms. Our
findings suggest mothers may be particularly affected by the amount of time they are required to
be separated from their spouses and to serve as “temporary single parents” to their children. In
contrast, youth were not significantly affected by the overall duration of the parent’s absence, but
instead were affected by whether his absence co-occurred with significant family events. Further
research on the nature of these influential missed events and the youth’s role in the events may
clarify why youth find the parent’s absence difficult. Perhaps these milestone events and
celebrations seem incomplete without the father. Alternatively, with 86% of the participating
27
youth being the eldest child, these adolescents may be assuming some of the adult burdens and
responsibilities in the family, particularly in dealing with significant stressful family events.
Contrary to previous findings that frequency of contact with the service member is
associated with youth psychosocial stress (Houston et al., 2013), our results show contact with
the service member to be protective against youth anxiety symptoms. Understanding what makes
contact with the service member risky versus protective is an important topic for future research.
Interpretation of this significant finding as well as our non-significant findings about contact is
limited by our use of a one-item, retrospective global question. It would be helpful to know more
about the nature of the contact and to assess more immediate reactions to contact. It also might
be useful to know about the preexisting nature of the relationships among family members as
that may influence whether contact during absences is fraught with irritations and frustrations or
is an opportunity for tenderness and comfort. Contact between families and service members
clearly can be a complicated matter, sometimes reassuring but also sometimes unsatisfying, e.g.,
family members have reported that the service member may be protecting them from disturbing
information and also that they, too, protect the service member from stresses at home (e.g.,
Joseph & Afifi, 2010). For families who anticipate future absences, it might be useful to plan for
contact so they have ways of connecting emotionally even if there are barriers to sharing certain
information.
Our study describes a timeline follow-back procedure, which may be useful in clinical
research and in applied settings to assess military families’ experiences of the overlapping
challenges of military service and family life. Though commonly used in other clinical contexts
(e.g., Fals-Stewart, O'Farrell, Freitas, McFarlin, & Rutigliano, 2000), these procedures are
underutilized in family assessments despite the following unique advantages. First, these
28
assessments remind the interviewer that deployments vary in their character due to both military-
and family-specific features. Second, the clinician obtains information about the objective
features of the service member’s absences as well as family members’ subjective perceptions of
absences. Third, inquiring about families’ deployment experiences provides the clinician a way
to recognize and validate the challenges some families face during absence, without over-
emphasizing the impact of service-related absence for families who have not faced as many
concurrent challenges. Fourth, the TFMFI provides a way to generate meaningful discussion
between family members and perhaps can be used to generate a shared platform to address
current or upcoming challenges. Though used here without the service member, including the
service member would likely provide an additional layer of clinically rich information. Thus, an
instrument like the TFMFI is a format worthy of consideration for clinical assessment with
families who face periodic temporary absences and need not be limited to military absences.
There are several limitations of our study that are worth noting. Our selection of a 5-year
timeframe to assess absence was rather arbitrary, and was dictated more by time constraints for
data collection than by empirical or theoretical considerations, as absences occurring earlier may
also certainly exert enduring influences on mother and youth. As noted, the construct of contact
could be improved with more detailed information, including the impact of contact. Similarly,
our preliminary count-based assessment of missed events could be enhanced by allowing
participants to nominate events, rate event impact/salience, or differentiate nuclear family versus
extended family events. Our sample was somewhat skewed to higher military ranks and
supervisory positions because service members with adolescent children have largely committed
to career-length service, and have advanced to these positions. Relatedly, since we assessed mid-
to late-adolescent youth, our findings may not generalize to younger children. Our sample differs
29
from the samples common in the literature on military families, in that few of our families were
experiencing a current deployment; our results may thus best be indicative of potential risk
factors during the post-deployment/reintegration phase rather than risks of deployment per se.
Finally, our use of standard mental health symptom inventories focuses on more clinically-
significant manifestations of distress reactions although we suspect family members’ responses
to the challenges addressed here may be evidenced more in daily individual and relationship
indicators, such as feeling worried (particularly about future absences), overwhelmed, or
frustrated by the lack of predictability about the service member parent’s presence in the family.
Despite these limitations, our study highlights the importance of more nuanced indices of
parental absence and offers an assessment strategy for collecting information about the family’s
unique history of service member absence in tandem with the civilian family members’ lives.
With a parental absence and even serial absences a common phenomenon for a number of
families, family clinicians and researchers need to attend to multidimensional impacts of the
absences, even after the family has reunited. Moreover, the discrepancy between our results on
contact and previous findings underscore how little is known about the impact of contact
between absent service members and family members at home. Pre-deployment briefing
opportunities that often are available to military members and spouses could address
expectations as well as possible benefits and challenges of contact. The data here—though
preliminary—point to the duration of absence, missed events, and contact as relevant dimensions
in understanding how families can be affected the absence of a military member. Though service
members’ absences were connected to family members’ mental health symptoms, these results
do not preclude the possibility that families also might be strengthened by such challenges,
which is an important direction for future research.
30
References
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(2010). Children on the homefront: The experience of children from military families.
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32
Table 1. Descriptive Statistics and Bivariate Correlations Among Study Variables
Variable M SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
1. Deployments 1.26 0.96
2. Time Away (months) 15.52 9.51 .30*
3. Events Missed 4.84 3.56 .27* .33**
4. Mother Contact 3.37 1.12 -.01 .10 -.01
5. Youth Contact 2.51 1.05 -.22
✝
-.13 -.08 .24
✝
6. Mother ANX 7.10 9.30 -.08 .34** .20
✝
-.09 -.08
7. Mother DEP 10.87 9.76 -.04 .26* .26* .06 -.17 .77**
8. Youth ANX 24.39 14.45 -.24* .06 .05 -.14 -.24
✝
.21
✝
.16
9. Youth DEP 10.11 6.18 -.04 .03 .21
✝
-.14 -.23
✝
.17 .22
✝
.63**
10. SM Rank 8.86 3.17 -.01 .07 -.17 .08 -.01 -.26* -.13 -.15 -.14
11. Stepfamily N/A N/A .12 -.21
✝
.03 -.02 .04 .01 .02 -.22
✝
-.34** -.38**
Note. ** p < .01, * p < .05,
✝
p < .10. SM = Service Member. ANX = Anxiety symptoms. DEP = Depression symptoms. N = 70 for all
variables but contact; 4 service members had never deployed and 2 youth chose to skip this question (mother contact N = 66, youth
contact N = 64). Deployments, time away, and events missed were all assessed for the 5-year period preceding the interview.
33
Table 2. Hierarchical Regression Analyses of Family Member Symptoms on Dimensions of Service Member Absence
Youths’ Anxiety Symptoms Youths’ Depression Symptoms
Variable B SE B β ΔR
2
B SE B β ΔR
2
Step 1 – Covariates .10* .12*
Stepfamily -5.48 3.69 -.18
✝
-4.86 1.51 -.38**
Number of Recent Deployments -3.99 1.91 -.26
✝
-.18 .78 -.03
Step 2 – Absence Variables .01 .06
✝
Cumulative Time Away .09 .20 .06 -.09 .08 -.13
Important Events Missed .44 .51 .11 .47 .21 .27*
Mothers’ Anxiety Symptoms Mothers’ Depression Symptoms
Variable B SE B β ΔR
2
B SE B β ΔR
2
Step 1 – Covariates .08
✝
.02
Rank -.82 .32 -.28 -.35 .36 -.11
Number of Recent Deployments -2.15 1.12 -.22
✝
-1.72 1.25 -.17
Step 2 – Absence Variables .16** .12*
Cumulative Time Away .39 .12 .40** .26 .13 .26*
Important Events Missed .20 .31 .08 .55 .35 .20
Note. ** p < .01, * p < .05,
✝
p < .10. Full model R
2
= .11, F(4, 65) = 2.06, p = .097 for youths’ anxiety symptoms and R
2
= .18, F(4,
65) = 3.64, p = .01 for youths’ depression symptoms. Full model R
2
= .24, F(4, 65) = 5.19, p = .001 for mothers’ anxiety symptoms
and R
2
= .14, F(4, 65) = 2.64, p = .04 for mothers’ depression symptoms.
34
Figure 1. Sample of One Year of a Family Timeline
35
Supplemental Figure 1. Contact Frequency Moderates the Effects of Cumulative Time Away on
Youth Anxiety
!
-10
10
30
50
70
90
110
130
Low High
Youth Anxiety Symptoms
Cumulative Time Away
High Contact
Low Contact
36
Stepping Up, Sticking Together:
Military Adolescents’ Support of Their Civilian Parents and Concurrent Depression Symptoms
Aubrey J. Rodriguez
Gayla Margolin
University of Southern California
37
Abstract
Objective: To assess the ways adolescents in active-duty military families provide
emotional and instrumental support to civilian mothers, and to investigate the consequences of
such support for their own symptoms of depression. Method: Eighty adolescents from active-
duty military families provided self-report ratings of emotional and instrumental support
rendered to their civilian mothers. Mother-adolescent dyads engaged in a 10-minute discussion
of military experiences, which was coded for adolescent emotionally supportive behavior.
Results: Path analyses demonstrated that adolescents’ instrumental support and observed
emotional support were inversely associated with adolescent depression symptoms, whereas self-
reported emotional support was marginally positively associated with symptoms. Mothers’
depression symptoms moderated the impact of adolescent instrumental support such that only
adolescents whose mothers reported low depression symptoms showed an inverse association
between instrumental support and adolescent depression symptoms. Recent military demands did
not moderate associations among adolescent support and depression symptoms. Conclusions:
Although negative connotations (e.g., of unhealthy role reversal or parentification) often are
associated with adolescent-to-parent support provision, we found that both adolescents’ self-
reported instrumental support and observer-rated emotional support were inversely linked to
adolescent depression. The role of developmental stage and military cultural norms and
expectations regarding adolescent support provision are possible influential factors in these
associations that deserve further empirical attention.
Keywords: military family, adolescent caregiving, parent-child relations, parentification
38
“All I try to do basically during this is just do what like what I did on
deployment…pretty much just keep the house together so that you can support
him and then I take care of you and the boys so that you are good so that you
could take care of Dad.”
– 16-year-old daughter, Navy family
Mother: I do appreciate they way you’ve grown and the boy, the young man
you’ve grown into. Because, I mean, a lot of people can take the moves and just
get attitudes and stuff and you’ve taken it pretty well. And I appreciate your
help with the kids when Daddy’s gone. You know, you take the role of the, the
main helper in the family, you know?
Son: Yeah.
Mother: So how do you feel when Daddy has to go away?
Son: Pressure.
- Mother and 14-year-old son, Air Force family
Active-duty military life poses unique family challenges for the children of service
members. Adolescent youth in particular may be required to “step up” and take on unfamiliar
and possibly challenging adult roles and responsibilities during periodic absences of the service
member due to training or deployment. The additional responsibilities may be burdensome or,
alternatively, may be opportunities for the adolescent to meet family needs and develop skills
and maturity. The empirical and theoretical literatures pose conflicting hypotheses and present
mixed evidence regarding youth experiences of distress versus growth in contexts that demand
increased responsibility and support provision. This paper investigates how military adolescents’
supportive behaviors relate to adolescents’ depression symptoms. Using multiple methods, we
assess adolescents’ supportive behavior toward their non-military parent through the direct
observation of mother-adolescent conversations and through adolescents’ reports of the extent to
which they provide specific types of emotional and instrumental support to their mother.
Adolescent-to-Parent Support and Psychosocial Outcomes
Some researchers (e.g., Walsh et al., 2006; Chase, 1999) have argued that youth who are
39
called upon to provide support and care for parents will experience distress when these demands
exceed the youth’s maturity or skill or when the demands interfere with typical, age-appropriate
activities with friends or at school. Providing skillful emotional support to a parent (e.g., giving
advice, listening to a parent’s problems) is assumed to be more difficult developmentally than
providing instrumental support (e.g., completing household chores, running errands) (Jurkovic,
Jessee, & Goglia, 1991). Indeed, youth reports of psychosocial distress or mental health
symptoms appear to be particularly linked to their provision of emotional support (Khafi, Yates,
& Luthar, 2014; McMahon & Luthar, 2007; Hooper et al., 2011). Though most studies do not
include both youth emotional and instrumental support behaviors, McMahon and Luthar (2007)
provides an exception: in their large sample of inner city mother-child dyads, emotional care that
children provided to the mother was positively associated with psychological distress whereas
completion of household chores was not.
Alternatively, other theorists (e.g., Jurkovic, 1997) suggest that youth experiences
providing help or support to a parent may increase youth competency and provide relevant
training to prepare youth for adulthood. Research shows that youth who take on adult-like
responsibilities report higher maturity, self-efficacy, and autonomy (Ireland & Pakenham, 2010;
Murphy et al., 2008; Stein, Rotheram-Borus, & Lester, 2007), particularly when the new
responsibilities are instrumental (Kuperminc et al., 2009). In addition, an adolescent’s ability to
provide emotional support to a parent may be an indicator of high quality parent-child
relationship (Tompkins, 2007). Yet, youth who care for a parent with mental illness report higher
rates of worry and caregiving discomfort than youth whose care recipient parent suffers from a
physical illness (Ireland & Pakenham, 2010), suggesting that this high quality relationship may
come with psychosocial costs for these youth.
40
To date, only qualitative data have been presented to describe adolescents’ experiences of
shifting expectations for support provision over the deployment cycle. Youth in these studies
report disruptions in roles both at deployment and again at reintegration and report that the
experiences of providing support and taking on responsibilities have mixed implications of
generating both stress and growth (Huebner, Mancini, Wilcox, Grass, & Grass, 2007; Mmari,
Roche, Sudhinaraset, & Blum, 2009). When supporting the non-military parent involves
instrumental tasks that expand or draw upon the adolescent’s competence, we anticipate positive
adolescent outcomes. However, providing emotional support to the non-military parent may
require a role reversal that is more uncomfortable for the adolescent and may be associated with
negative adolescent outcomes. We thus expect adolescents who engage in more instrumental
support to report lower symptoms of depression, whereas emotional support will be positively
associated with depressive symptoms.
Our understanding of the dynamics of youth taking on adult roles and responsibilities is
limited by the methodologies used—primarily adults’ retrospective self-reports of how much
care they provided to a parent throughout their childhood years. Few studies assess these
processes as they unfold and even fewer have utilized observational assessment of parent-child
interactions in at-risk families to study boundary disturbances (for exceptions see Burkett, 1991;
Hazen, Jacobvitz, & McFarland, 2005). Among these observational studies, none have focused
on the youth’s in-the-moment provision of support and have focused instead on the
“parentifying” behaviors flowing from parent to child, in which the child is asked – directly or
indirectly – to assume an adult-like, peer or co-parental role relative to their parent (see Earley &
Cushway, 2002 for fuller discussion of this “adulto-centric” bias). The current study employs
both observational assessment of youth supportive behavior during mother-child conversations
41
and adolescent self-reported ratings of their engagement in instrumental and emotional support
tasks.
Role of Mothers’ Distress
Military service is somewhat distinct from other commonly assessed family situations
that place families “at risk” for parentification processes in that the civilian parent does not have
an identified limitation in her functioning that requires support. Considerable research shows
youth experience distress in situations requiring youth support-giving due to a parent’s
impairment, such as parental substance use (Burnett et al., 2006), and diagnosis of mental illness
(Abraham & Stein, 2013; Van Loon et al., 2015) or chronic medical illness (Ireland &
Pakenham, 2010; Sang, Cederbaum, & Hurlburt, 2013). There also are contrasting findings: for
example, youth who provided care for mothers with HIV reported high initial levels of distress
but evidenced better coping and lower substance use several years later (Stein, Rotheram-Borus,
& Lester, 2007).
Spouses of service members are at elevated risk for psychosocial distress although there
is considerable range in findings and the majority are functioning well (Lester et al., 2010;
Mansfield et al., 2010). It is estimated, for example, that wives of service members are as likely
as soldiers returning from combat to meet criteria for a diagnosis of depression (Eaton et al.,
2008; Hoge et al., 2004), with depression prevalence rates nearly double those of the general
population (see Verdeli et al., 2011). Moreover, over one third of wives of deployed soldiers
report moderately severe depression symptoms (Faulk, Gloria, Cance, & Steinhardt, 2012). In
light of evidence that parental mental illness is linked to increased youth perceptions of the
discomfort or burden associated support and care provision (Abraham & Stein, 2013; Ireland &
Pakenham, 2010) and, more generally, that mothers’ depression is linked to youth depression, we
42
investigate the role of mothers’ depression. We anticipate that depression in the non-service
member parent will serve as a risk factor that exacerbates the burden of emotional care and
diminishes the protective influence of instrumental care on youth symptoms.
Role of Military Demands
Compared to other circumstances where youth need to step up in a family, another unique
feature for children of military service members is that they may experience more intermittent
“calls to duty.” The possible temporariness of the support arrangement in military families may
make support provision more acceptable to the youth. Relatedly, these demands for stepping up
are more situational or external to the family and may foster a “circling of the wagons” or a
“pulling together” as family members attempt to cope communally with a common stressor. In
general, there is considerable variability in the extent to which the service member’s work
activities place demands or necessitate sacrifices by all family members. As such, we anticipate
that the degree to which the family’s life as a whole is disrupted due to military service may
impact associations between adolescent support behaviors and their depression. High military
service demands are anticipated to heighten the linkage between youth supportive behaviors and
depression symptoms.
Current Study
The current study tests the above hypotheses linking adolescent-to-parent support
provision to adolescent depression in a sample of active-duty military families. In addition to
assessing a unique context for adolescent support provision (i.e., military service), our study
advances the current scientific literature on adolescent support provision by incorporating
observational ratings of adolescents’ supportive behaviors towards their mothers during a novel
communication task during which mothers and adolescents were asked to speak directly about
43
their experiences as a military family. Importantly, this task provided a context for assessing
youth-to-parent support provision about a shared experience (as contrasted with support given
for the mother’s problems). We also include adolescent self-reports of both instrumental and
emotional support behaviors directed toward their civilian mothers. We then extend this
investigation by incorporating data on mothers’ ratings of their own depressive symptoms and
the number of recent military-connected demands on the family, collected via a timeline
interview. We tested the following hypotheses:
Hypothesis 1: Adolescent instrumental support will be negatively – and emotional support will
be positively – associated with youth depressive symptoms.
Hypothesis 2: Mothers’ depression symptoms will serve as a risk factor for youth depression
symptoms, and will moderate the influence of youth support behaviors such that:
2a. Only those adolescents whose mother reports low symptoms will evidence
inverse associations between adolescents’ instrumental support and their own
depressive symptoms.
2b. Among adolescents whose mothers report high depressive symptoms,
emotional support will be associated with elevated symptoms of depression.
Hypothesis 3: Military service demands will moderate these associations such that adolescents
from families who experience high demands will evidence greater linkage (both
positive and negative) between their supportive behavior and depression
symptoms.
Method
Participants
The current study assessed 80 mother-adolescent dyads from active-duty United States
44
military families residing in Southern California. Dyads were eligible if they had: (a) a
father/husband serving on active duty, (b) a mother not currently on active duty, (c) a child aged
14-18, and (d) ability to complete study measures in English. Families were recruited through
advertisements in military newsletters/social media/websites, announcements via military
support agencies, flyers posted in base hospitals/clinics, and referrals from study participants. Of
142 families who initially contacted us 104 were eligible; of these 80 families (77%) completed
all study procedures; the most common reasons for participant failure to enroll were scheduling
difficulties (n = 10) and non-response to contact attempts (n = 8). Participating adolescents (n =
43 female) ranged in age from 14.0 to 18.9 (M = 16.0, SD = 1.2). Youth identified their
race/ethnicity as follows: 18.8% Hispanic/Latino, 46.3% Non-Hispanic White/Caucasian, 2.5%
American Indian or Alaska Native, 1.3% Asian, 5.0% Black/African-American, and 26.3%
multiracial. Mothers’ average age was 40.2 (SD = 5.0, range = 31.6-53.0). Thirty-five percent of
mothers worked for pay outside the home; 10% of the mothers had a high school education or
less, 33.8% percent had attended some college, 15% had completed an associate’s or
certificate/trade program, 30% had an undergraduate degree, and 11.3% of mothers had
completed a degree beyond undergraduate.
In approximately one-third of participant families (33.8%, n = 27), the service member
was the adolescent’s stepfather; among these families, adolescents reported an average of 10.6
years of co-residence with the service member (SD = 4.2, range = 3.0-17.5). Families averaged
2.7 children in the home (SD = 1.0, range = 1-6; 95% had at least one sibling). The child who
participated in this study typically (82.5%) was the eldest child in the family. The
overrepresentation of firstborns was due to recruitment/enrollment procedures; we chose to
assess the child most likely to assume greater responsibility due to a parent’s absence and who
45
could best engage in a parent-child discussion. Forty-nine percent of families lived in military
housing. Most service member parents were serving in the U.S. Marine Corps (48.8%) or Navy
(40.0%). In our sample, 23.8% of service members were mid-grade enlisted personnel (E4-E6),
40% were senior enlisted (E7-E9), 16.3% were junior officers (O1-O3), and 20% were senior
officers (O4-O6). Service members had deployed an average of 4.3 times (SD = 3.4, range 0-18).
Four service members had never deployed, and eight were deployed at the time of the interview.
Thirteen mothers (16.3%) were veterans/retirees of the U.S. military.
Procedures
Data Collection Procedures. Mother-adolescent dyads were assessed in a 2 1/2 hour
meeting in their homes without the presence of the service member. Study procedures were
approved by the University Institutional Review Board and passive recruitment procedures were
approved by the local Naval Medical Center’s Institutional Review Board; adult participants
(mothers and adolescents > age 18) provided written informed consent and other adolescents
provided written assent. Dyads were first interviewed conjointly about the service member’s
service-connected absences (e.g., deployment, training, temporary duty assignment) during the
previous five years, using the Timeline Followback Military Family Interview (TFMFI;
Rodriguez & Margolin, 2015). Following the TFMFI, dyads completed questionnaires to report
on current parent-child conflict issues and the adolescent’s recent instrumental and emotional
support behaviors. They then had two separate 10-minute videotaped discussions, without the
experimenter present, about: (a) current issues that were causing conflict in the mother-
adolescent relationship, and (b) their experiences as a military family. Discussion order was
counterbalanced across families. The discussion about military family experiences, which is the
focus here, was guided by the following verbal instructions: “We would like you to discuss the
46
things you have experienced as a family related to your family member’s military service. You
may speak about any experience – or multiple experiences – that have been meaningful to either
of you or to your family as a whole.”
Following the discussion task, mothers and adolescents used laptop computers provided
by the experimenter to privately complete a number of questionnaires, including measures of
current depression symptoms.
Measures
Observed Adolescent Emotional Support Behavior. In a coding system designed
specifically for the parent-adolescent discussions about being a military family (Rodriguez &
Margolin, 2014), we identified adolescent emotional support behaviors as the composite of two
coded behaviors that indicated adolescents were engaging with their mothers as equivalent
counterparts in the discussion to help regulate the mothers’ emotions and solve problems. The
first behavior, assisting with adaptive emotion regulation, was coded when adolescent behaviors
functioned to encourage or allow mothers to express intense or difficult emotions in adaptive
ways during the discussion (e.g., validating their mother’s feelings in a way that modulated the
intensity; encouraging the mothers to recognize both positive and negative feelings about
situations; and attempting to “soften the blow” when conveying negative or difficult material by
acknowledging their mothers’ feelings or positive traits). The second behavior, accepting
responsibility, was coded when adolescents shared blame for their contribution to the problem or
challenge being discussed or assumed accountability for the role they could play in a solution.
Examples of these codes communicated that the adolescent was attempting to relieve some of
their mother’s distress about the origin of a problem or the challenge of solving it; for example,
youth often recognized their own responsibility for a problem when their mothers communicated
47
guilt about having allowed a problem to develop. Though some youth suggestions may have
involved offers of instrumental help (e.g., picking up a sibling from school), the function of the
offer was to alleviate emotional distress communicated by the mother.
A team of six undergraduate and post-baccalaureate coders (n = 5 females), naïve to
study hypotheses, underwent six weeks of training in general observational methodology and in
the coding system for the project. Following training and achievement of acceptable reliability
with the coding system, two coders were randomly assigned to independently watch each video-
recorded dyadic military experience discussion and to rate mother-to-adolescent and adolescent-
to-mother behaviors at five 2-minute intervals using an intensity/impact scale ranging from none
(0) to a lot (3). The two adolescent emotional support codes correlated (r = .60), and we created
our composite by summing the ratings for each 2-minute segment and then taking the mean score
across intervals for all analyses. Inter-rater reliability (ICC 2, k) for this composite was .77.
Adolescent Self-Reported Support. Adolescents completed a 20-item Helping Parents
Inventory, created for the current study, to report how much support they had provided to their
mothers over the past 30 days. Items were rated on a four-point scale ranging from 0 (None) to 3
(A Lot). Four items from this scale represented emotional support (Cronbach’s α = .83) and 12
items represented instrumental support (α = .58). These modest internal consistencies are
comparable to those reported for similar inventories of child helping behaviors (see e.g., Khafi,
Yates, & Luthar, 2014) and reflect the pragmatic reality that all behaviors are not possible for all
families, e.g., not all youth can drive or have the opportunity to babysit. Table 1 lists all items
and provides item-level descriptives. Items were summed to create emotional and instrumental
support scale scores, which correlated at r = .55.
Adolescent Depression Symptoms. Participating adolescents completed a 26-item version
48
of the Children’s Depression Inventory (CDI; Kovacs, 1992); due to ethical/reporting concerns,
one item regarding suicidal ideation was excluded (Cronbach’s α = .83). Participants were
permitted to skip any items they preferred not to answer; 61 CDI items were skipped (2.9%)
across 34 adolescents. We used mean imputation to create participants’ total scores.
Mothers’ Depression Symptoms. Mothers reported their symptoms of depression using a
20-item version of the Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II; Beck, Steer, & Brown, 1996), with
the omission of the suicidal ideation item. Internal consistency in this sample for the BDI-II was
α =.92. As with youth data, we used mean imputation for missing items (1.3%).
Military Demands. Using a calendar-assisted interview to establish dates when the
service member was absent from the home or the family moved (see Rodriguez & Margolin,
2015 for a more extensive discussion of this procedure), we created a composite measure of four
TFMFI variables that quantified the impact of military service on family life during the previous
five years: (a) number of deployments (M = 1.26, SD = .92, range = 0-6), (b) the service
member’s cumulative absence due to deployment, training, temporary duty, etc. (M = 15.50
months, SD = 9.45, range = 2-50), (c) number of important family events missed during absence
(M = 4.85, SD = 3.75, range = 0-16), and (d) number of residential moves (M = 2.45, SD = 1.65,
range = 0-7). To create the military demands composite, we transformed each of the four
variables into z-scores, and then summed the four z-scored measures.
Analytic Plan
We utilized path analysis in Mplus 7.3 (Muthén & Muthén, 2012) to assess our
hypotheses regarding the impacts of adolescents’ self-reported emotional and instrumental
support and observed emotional support behaviors on adolescents’ depression symptoms. Our
first model assessed the combined contributions of observed emotional support behaviors and
49
adolescents’ self-reported instrumental and emotional support. The next set of models assessed
the potential moderating effects of our two contextual stress variables (i.e., military demands,
mother depression) on links between adolescents’ support behavior and adolescents’ depression
symptoms. Quality of fit for our path models was assessed by maximum likelihood χ
2
,
Comparative Fit Index (CFI), root mean squared error of approximation (RMSEA); given our
small sample size, CFI values of .90 or greater and RMSEA values of less than .06 were criteria
for close model fit. Follow-up simple slopes analyses were conducted to probe significant
interaction terms following re-centering procedures described by Holmbeck (2002).
Prior to conducting our path analyses, we screened several demographic variables as
potential covariates for the analyses by examining their associations with adolescent depression
symptoms. We considered adolescent age, maternal age, mother education, mother veteran
status, stepfamily status, military versus nonmilitary housing, and number of children in the
home; only stepfamily status was significantly associated with depression symptoms and was
retained as a covariate. We included current deployment status and adolescent gender as
covariates for all models on an a priori basis. We also assessed for effects of youth age and
found no improvement in model fit when youth age was added to our path models.
Results
Descriptive and Bivariate Analyses
Table 1 provides item-level descriptives for adolescents’ self-reported instrumental and
emotional support. On average, adolescents reported engaging in 5.5 (SD = 2.0) of the 12
instrumental behaviors and 2.5 (SD = 1.5) of the 4 emotional behaviors. Girls and boys did not
differ in their overall mean score across all instrumental support behaviors or across all
emotional support behaviors. However, with respect to individual items, girls reported more
50
cooking for the mother, M = 1.40 vs. 0.68, t(78) = 3.48, p = .001, and giving advice, M = 0.86 vs.
0.51, t(78) = 2.05, p = .04. Adolescents in stepfamilies reported significantly more engagement
in babysitting, M = 1.96 vs. 1.04, t(78) = 3.37, p = .001, advice-giving, M = 0.96 vs. 0.57, t(78)
= 2.24, p = .03, and talking about their mothers’ problems, M = 1.37 vs. 0.75, t(78) = 2.83 , p =
.01. Adolescents with currently deployed fathers did not differ on their endorsements of support
behaviors from adolescents with non-deployed fathers. Descriptive statistics for continuous study
variables are presented in Table 2. The adolescents’ self-reported support variables (instrumental
and emotional) were relatively normally distributed, as were adolescent depression symptoms.
Observed adolescent support behavior and mothers’ depression symptoms were significantly
positively skewed.
Table 3 displays bivariate correlations among the continuous study variables. Adolescent
instrumental support was positively correlated with self-reported emotional support and
negatively correlated with adolescents’ depression symptoms. Observed adolescent emotional
support behaviors were marginally positively associated with adolescent self-reported
instrumental support and marginally negatively associated with depression symptoms.
Adolescents’ self-reported emotional support was not related to adolescents’ depression
symptoms. Our putative moderators (i.e., military demands and mothers’ depression symptoms)
were not significantly correlated with any study variables. In addition, we found no bivariate
associations between youth age and any of our variables of interest.
Table 4 presents between-group comparisons for our three model covariates: adolescent
gender, stepfamily status, and current deployment. Only three between-group comparisons were
significant, and they all involved stepfamily status. Adolescents from stepfamilies reported
providing significantly more emotional support, t(78) = 2.66, p = .01, and instrumental support,
51
t(78) = 2.27, p = .03, and they reported lower depression symptoms than adolescents from
families with two biological parents, t(78) = 2.84, p = .01.
Main Effects of Adolescent Support on Adolescent Depression Symptoms
Our model testing the association between adolescent emotional and instrumental
supportive behaviors and adolescents’ depression symptoms (Hypothesis 1) fit the data
adequately,χ
2
(9)= 10.132, p = .34; CFI = .92; TLI = .95; RMSEA = .04; R
2
= .22, p = .01. Figure
1 presents the final model with path coefficients. As hypothesized, adolescent self-reported
instrumental support was negatively associated with adolescent depression symptoms (B = -.25,
p = .04) and adolescent self-reported emotional support was marginally positively associated
with depression symptoms (B = .21, p = .08). However, contrary to our predictions, observed
adolescent support behavior was negatively associated with adolescent depression symptoms (B
= -.20, p = .045).
The Role of Context: Military Demands and Mothers’ Depression as Moderators
Role of Mothers’ Depression. In separate analyses testing the moderating effects of
mothers’ depression symptoms, Hypothesis 3 was supported for instrumental support but not for
emotional support. Our model assessing the moderating effect of mothers’ depression symptoms
on the association between instrumental support and adolescent depression symptoms fit the data
closely, χ
2
(15) = 11.68, p = .70; CFI = 1.00; TLI = 1.10; RMSEA < .001; R
2
= .28, p = .001.
Maternal depression symptoms moderated associations between adolescents’ self-reported
instrumental support and adolescent depression symptoms (B = .23, p = .03), such that
instrumental support was negatively associated with adolescent depression only when maternal
depression was low (i.e., -1SD), B = -.66, p < .001. At high levels of maternal depression
symptoms (i.e., +1SD), adolescent instrumental support and adolescent depression symptoms
52
were not significantly associated, B = -.02, p = .90. Figure 2 displays this interaction pattern.
Maternal depression did not moderate effects of adolescent observed or self-reported emotional
support on adolescent depression symptoms.
Role of Military Demands. Next, we ran three analyses testing whether military demands
would moderate associations between adolescent support and adolescent depression. Hypothesis
2 was not supported in that military demands did not moderate the effects of any of the three
adolescent support variables on adolescent depression symptoms. Thus, we have no support for
the hypothesis that military demands moderate the links between adolescents’ supportive
behaviors toward civilian mothers and adolescent depression.
Discussion
This study of active duty military families offers a nuanced look at the impact on
adolescents’ mental health related to providing support to their civilian mothers. Adolescent-to-
parent support provision has, on the one hand, been considered an example of unhealthy
parentification or role-reversal within the parent-child relationship (e.g., McMahon & Luthar,
2007) and, on the other hand, a spring board for adolescent growth in autonomy, maturity, and
socio-emotional competence (e.g., Stein, Rotheram-Borus, & Lester, 2007). In this first
quantitative investigation on adolescent-to-parent support provision in military families, the
findings offer evidence that adolescents’ support provision can serve both risk and protective
functions for youth. As anticipated, adolescent reports of recent instrumental helping behaviors
were associated with lower depression symptoms. Our expectation that adolescents’ provision of
emotional support would be associated with increased risk for depressive symptoms was partially
met and partially discounted: whereas adolescent self-reported emotional help was marginally
associated with elevated adolescent depression, observed emotional support behavior was linked
53
to lower adolescent depression symptoms. Mothers’ depression symptoms disrupted the
protective influence of adolescents’ instrumental support on adolescent depression symptoms but
did not exacerbate the risk of emotional support for adolescent depression. Contrary to our
expectations, there was no evidence that level of military demand placed on the family (due to
cumulative time absent, family life events during absence, and numbers of deployments and
moves) affected associations.
Youth Instrumental Support Provision: The Benefits of Collaboration
It thus appears that youth engagement in helpful instrumental tasks (chores, babysitting,
assisting with technology) that putatively ease the mother’s burden is associated with better
psychological adjustment. With few exceptions (e.g., Pakenham & Cox, 2010), the majority of
studies in the parentification and parent-child role reversal literatures (e.g., Kuperminc et al.,
2009; Tompkins, 2007) suggest that greater involvement in instrumental activities may represent
positive adaptation to family stressors. These findings dovetail with research on youth provision
of family assistance in normative circumstances (i.e., on a daily basis). For example, Telzer &
Fuligni (2009) found youth family assistance was associated with youth positive well-being at
both the level of the day (i.e., youth felt more positive on days they helped more) and the level of
the person (i.e., youth who helped more felt more positive). These results make sense if
adolescents’ self-efficacy is bolstered by activities that tap into their expertise (e.g., technology)
or engage them in adult-like responsibilities (e.g., meal-preparation). Yet, it is also possible that
adolescents who are better adjusted show more initiative with respect to household functions or
simply have more collaborative relationships with the mother and thus naturally take on daily
tasks. Notably, the protective effects of adolescents’ instrumental support provision are not
evidenced if such efforts occur in a context of mothers’ depression, which possibly indicates her
54
diminished functioning. That is, perhaps the adolescent benefits from “pitching in” only if those
efforts are collaborative, rather than compensating for the mother. Moreover, in contrast to
previous studies (e.g., Van Loon et al., 2015), we did not find evidence for maternal symptoms
exacerbating the link between youth-to-parent support and youth symptoms. Perhaps this is due
to a lower degree of symptomatology in our community sample of parents, as the mothers in Van
Loon et al.’s (2015) study all manifested symptoms consistent with mental illness diagnosis and
perhaps required a more intense level of adolescent instrumental support.
Youth Emotional Support Provision: Bearing versus Sharing the Burden
Adolescents’ provision of emotional support is a more complicated picture. On the one
hand, when adolescents’ report giving the mother higher levels of emotional support, they also
report marginally higher levels of symptoms of depression; this is consistent with previous
literature linking youth-reported emotional parentification to youth-reported symptoms (Peris,
Goeke-Morey, Cummings, & Emery, 2008). The behaviors reported – for example, helping her
worry less and talking about her problems – focus on the adolescents’ efforts to solve or to
relieve the mothers’ distress from her problems. On the other hand, adolescents’ observed
emotional support during the mother-adolescent discussions, which was inversely related to
adolescents’ depression symptoms, spontaneously emerged in response to the instruction to
discuss what they experienced as a family related to being a military family and demands upon
the service member. Consideration of these two divergent findings—negative implications of
emotional support when the mother needs it versus positive implications of emotional support in
discussing a shared experience—clearly demonstrate the relevance of assessing the emotional
support to parents under varying circumstances.
Although the coded emotionally supportive behaviors (i.e., encouraging the mother’s
55
emotional expression, sharing in responsibility for coping/problem solving) seem more
characteristic of co-equals than hierarchical parent-child relationships, the degree of emotional
competence implied in these behaviors may be appropriate (albeit still relatively infrequent) for
this developmental stage of mid- to late-adolescence. The coded behaviors represent the
adolescents’ effort to engage the mother in co-construction of an emotionally rich and balanced
view of military life for their family, which also may say something about the adolescents’
emotional maturity and communication abilities. Examining a broader age-range would shed
light on whether such behaviors that appear protective with this age group may actually be risk
factors at earlier developmental stages, perhaps to the extent that providing this support exceeds
younger children’s developmental abilities (Jurkovic, Jessee, & Goglia, 1991).
Impacts of Military Service and Military Culture
An unexpected finding of this paper is the lack of significance for the index of military
demands, which included the service member’s number of deployments, cumulative time spent
away, number of missed significant family events, and family residential moves. Previous results
from this sample show the father’s absence from important family events, but not number of
deployments, is associated with adolescents’ depression (Rodriguez & Margolin, 2015). The
more comprehensive index of military demand used here was not associated with adolescents’
support or depression symptoms; nor did it moderate links between adolescent support and
depression symptoms. Our initial study design intended to include a direct comparison between
families with deployed versus non-deployed service members. However, as frequency and
number of deployments decreased during the study period, we opted to use a within-group
design focusing on the military demand index, which did vary considerably across our sample
but still was not significant.
56
Perhaps the transitions that characterize military life tend not to be linked to exhibited
elevated rates of maladjustment (Lester et al., 2010) because these experiences are normative
within the military family subculture. The military is said to be a distinct subculture with its own
expectations and norms (see Dunivin, 1994 for a general discussion), and these norms likely
impact family relationships and govern family member role expectations and role behavior (see
Milburn & Lightfoot, 2013). In the context of nearly continuous transitions typical for military
families, adolescent-to-parent support provision may actually fit with subcultural norms and may
thus not function as a psychosocial risk factor. Although expectations specifically about children
supporting a civilian parent have yet to be assessed, similar processes have accounted for the
absence of negative effects (and/or presence of positive effects) of youth supportive behavior
among subcultural groups who place higher value on filial responsibility (e.g., Latinos and
African-Americans; see Jurkovic, Kuperminc, Perilla, Murphy, Ibañez, & Casey, 2004 and
Khafi, Yates, & Luthar, 2014 respectively). Inversely, young adults’ perceived unfairness (i.e.,
lack of fit with expectations) of the youth-to-parent support arrangement mediates links between
parentification and mental health symptoms (Jankowski, Hooper, Sandage, & Hannah, 2013).
This pattern of findings may suggest that, if adolescents in military families expect to provide
instrumental and emotional support within the family, they may take pride in their supportive
role and not feel unnecessarily burdened. Future research is needed to compare adolescents from
military families with those from non-military families on these dimensions; the direct
assessment of norms and expectations regarding adolescent-to-parent support would provide a
useful context for understanding the impact of these behaviors.
More generally, research is needed to compare military and non-military adolescents, as
well as to investigate military families at different stages of deployment or service member
57
absence. The majority of military adolescents experience the demands of military service
throughout their lives though demands often decrease over the course of a military career. In the
current study, only a few adolescents (n = 8) were experiencing a current separation from the
service member parent. For these reasons, our assessment of adolescent-to-parent support likely
occurred during a period of relative stability with reference to military demands. Adolescents and
families in our study may not have appraised recent separations from the parent, residential
moves, or missed events as salient crises or challenges that required family reorganization.
Ideally, it would be important to directly compare a large number of families with and without a
deployed service member or to longitudinally assess whether helping behaviors wax and wane
with the phases of deployment, as qualitative investigations have suggested (e.g., Huebner et al.,
2007).
Different Types of Youth Support Behaviors
To date, adolescents’ emotional and instrumental assistance is an understudied topic in
the family process literature, and the current data provide more detailed characterization of these
supportive behaviors. The data here show that the most common types of instrumental assistance
provided are household chores, babysitting, and assisting with technology. Our data indicate that
85% of youth reported providing some form of emotional support – with helping mothers worry
less and listening to mothers’ problems as common manifestations of such support. In addition,
31.6% of adolescents in our sample exhibited emotionally supportive behaviors during a
discussion with their mothers. Directly assessing adolescents’ reactions to providing different
types of support to parents would better inform our understanding of these phenomena. In
addition, mothers’ subjective and behavioral responses to the adolescents’ supportive behaviors
as well as mothers’ perceptions about the support would further put the behaviors in a relevant
58
dyadic context.
Overall, the data presented here suggest that adolescents’ support of their parents can
play a meaningful role in the adolescents’ mental health. To date, this is the first study to assess
youth-to-parent support provision among military adolescents as well as one of the first studies
to simultaneously model the impacts of instrumental and emotional support on youth symptoms.
The results highlight differential impacts of support behaviors, with some having positive effects
and others having negative effects. It is noteworthy that the self-reported instrumental and
emotional support behaviors—assessed at the same time through same instrument and positively
correlated with each other—had opposite associations with symptoms of depression. Different
types of emotional support to the mother also showed divergent effects: emotional support
during a discussion with the potential for shared meaning making was associated with lower
adolescent depression symptoms whereas emotional support when adolescents feel called upon
to help a parent with her problems was associated with higher depression symptoms. It is thus
important not to make broad conclusions about the benefits or risks when adolescents act in
supportive ways to their parents.
Study Limitations and Strengths
This study has several limitations that should be noted. First, because this study only
included military families, we cannot determine whether the impact of the support provision
processes tested here apply to other families in which a parent is temporarily or permanently
absent, or applies to families more generally. Future research should include a non-military
sample as well as families with other types of parental absence. Second, as few of our families
were currently experiencing separation from the service member parent, our results may best be
understood as characterizing the impact of adolescents’ routine provision of help and care rather
59
than help provided due to acute military service demands. Third, another limitation of the cross-
sectional design of our study is our inability to assess directional effects between adolescents’
supportive behaviors and symptoms of depression; for example, adolescents who engaged in
more instrumental support may subsequently have felt less depressed or, alternatively,
adolescents who experienced lower depression symptoms were more able or willing to provide
instrumental help. Fourth, symptoms of depression were the only index of adolescent adjustment
examined here. Other mental health symptoms and indications of the adolescents’ overall
adjustment (e.g., school performance or social development) might be relevant as well.
Despite these limitations, the multi-method approach used to assess adolescents’ support
of parents is a strength. Some types of support, particularly instrumental behaviors can only be
assessed through self-report. Emotional support that emerges seamlessly in the course of a
discussion (and perhaps captures behaviors that the adolescent is not even aware of) is best
captured through direct observation. A related strength is that the conversations took place in the
familiar setting of the family’s own home, thus capturing naturalistic behavioral samples.
Understanding adolescent support behaviors in military families also is important in that values
of providing service to others and helping larger causes may be particularly salient for these
families; these adolescents may thus take pride in helping so that the service member can do
important work.
Implications and Conclusions
These results hold several important implications for those who work with military
adolescents and their families. Challenging the notion that all child-to-parent support provision is
evidence of relational role-reversal and is therefore detrimental to youth functioning, these
findings suggest that certain types of adolescents’ support to parents, both instrumental and
60
emotional, can be adaptive for adolescents. There is some suggestion that support, when given at
will by the adolescents, can be protective against distress. However, support where the
adolescent becomes involved in the mothers’ worries or problems—situations that typically are
beyond the control of the adolescent—do not have salutary effects and are marginally related to
depression symptoms. Thus, clinicians and others who work with military families can benefit
from careful assessments of the specific ways that adolescents support their parents, as well as
how the support fits expectations of the particular family and the normative expectations of the
military family subculture.
61
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Table 1. Item-Level Descriptives for Adolescents’ Self-Reported Support Behaviors
Item M SD Range
Instrumental Support Behaviors
Doing household chores 1.91 0.90 0-4
Providing babysitting 1.35 1.23 0-3
Assisting her with other technology (DVD, phone, etc.) 1.21 1.11 0-3
Doing errands 1.11 1.01 0-3
Cooking for her 1.06 0.99 0-3
Assisting her on the computer 1.03 1.18 0-3
Giving money 0.59 0.83 0-3
Watching out for her health or getting her to go to the doctor 0.56 0.88 0-3
Getting her to pay attention to diet 0.35 0.62 0-2
Driving her around 0.24 0.66 0-3
Translating from one language to another 0.21 0.61 0-3
Driving someone else around (e.g., younger sibling) 0.15 0.51 0-3
Emotional Support Behaviors
Helping her worry less 1.20 0.97 0-3
Giving emotional support 1.06 1.02 0-3
Talking about her problems 0.96 0.96 0-3
Giving advice 0.70 0.77 0-3
Note. All items are assessed over the previous 30 days.
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Table 2. Descriptive Statistics for Continuous Study Variables
Variable M SD Min. Max.
Observed Adolescent Emotional Support 0.42 0.98 0 6
Self-Reported Instrumental Support 4.09 2.17 0 9
Self-Reported Emotional Support 3.92 3.05 0 11
Adolescent Depression Symptoms 10.10 6.03 0 24
Military Demands (Z-Score Composite) 0.00 2.42 -4.15 6.68
Mother Depression Symptoms 11.06 9.44 0 48
Youth Age 16.03 1.21 14.0 18.9
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Table 3. Bivariate Associations Among Continuous Study Variables
Variable 1 2 3 4 5 6
1. Observed Adolescent Emotional Support --
2. Self-Reported Instrumental Support .19
†
--
3. Self-Reported Emotional Support .12 .55** --
4. Adolescent Depression Symptoms (CDI) -.22
†
-.23* -.01 --
5. Military Demands Composite -.01 .06 -.01 .00 --
6. Mother Depression Symptoms (BDI) -.04 .09 .11 .16 .17 --
7. Youth Age -.05 -.03 -.09 -.10 .11 .05
Note.
†
p < .10, * p < .05, **p < .01.
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Table 4. Differences in Mean Scores Between Demographic Groups on Continuous Variables
Variable
Adolescent Male Stepfamily Currently Deployed
Yes
(n = 37)
No
(n = 43)
Yes
(n = 27)
No
(n = 53)
Yes
(n = 8)
No
(n = 72)
Observed Adolescent Emotional Support 0.37
(0.93)
0.46
(1.03)
0.44
(0.98)
0.40
(0.99)
0.25
(0.53)
0.44
(1.02)
Self-Reported Instrumental Support 9.65
(4.21)
9.90
(4.93)
11.37
a
(5.04)
8.97
a
(4.16)
8.13
(2.23)
9.97
(4.75)
Self-Reported Emotional Support 3.62
(2.91)
4.19
(3.18)
5.15
b
(3.15)
3.30
b
(2.83)
2.50
(1.85)
4.08
(3.13)
Adolescent Depression Symptoms 9.46
(4.94)
10.64
(6.84)
7.52
c
(4.82)
11.41
c
(6.20)
7.89
(4.59)
10.34
(6.14)
Military Demands 0.28
(2.45)
-0.24
(2.39)
0.36
(2.98)
-0.18
(2.08)
1.03
(1.98)
-0.11
(2.44)
Mother Depression Symptoms 11.60
(10.86)
10.60
(8.12)
11.25
(10.39)
10.97
(9.02)
8.79
(6.64)
11.32
(9.70)
Note. Means with matching superscripts differ from one another at p < .05. Standard deviations are presented in parentheses below
their respective means.
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Figure 1. Final Model of Associations Between Adolescent-to-Mother Support and Adolescent
Depression Symptoms
Note.
†
p < .10, * p < .05, **p < .01. Covariates included in analysis: adolescent gender, current
deployment, and stepfamily status.
Self-Reported
Instrumental Support
Self-Reported
Emotional Support
Observed Adolescent
Emotional Support
Adolescent Depression
Symptoms
-.25*
.21
+
-.20*
.12
.55**
.19
+
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Figure 2. Mothers’ Depression Symptoms Moderate the Association Between Adolescent Self-
Reported Instrumental Support and Adolescent Depression Symptoms
!
0
5
10
15
20
Low Instrumental Support High Instrumental Support
Adolescent Depression Symptoms
Low Mother Depression Symptoms
High Mother Depression Symptoms
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Spillover within the Military Family: Mothers’ Negative Emotional Talk as a Link to
Adolescents’ Mental Health
Aubrey J. Rodriguez & Gayla Margolin
University of Southern California
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Abstract
In military families, children’s and mothers’ mental health symptoms are linked, yet no
studies to date have attempted to assess the proximal relationship processes that are likely to
account for this similarity in family members’ distress. This study, of 80 civilian mother-
adolescent dyads from active-duty military families, assesses mother negative emotion as a
linguistic dimension of mother-to-youth talk that indexes risk for both family members’
symptoms of depression and anxiety. We find evidence for an indirect association between a
history of military-connected father absence and youth internalizing symptoms via mother
symptoms and mother negative emotion talk. These preliminary data, among the first to directly
assess communication behaviors among military families, provide evidence that military
absences affect communication processes among non-military family members and that elevated
negative emotional content in family interactions is a specific mechanism that may transmit risk
for mental health concerns.
Keywords: military families, parent-child communication, emotional expressiveness, LIWC
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Military service is a significant stressor for the families of active duty service members,
who often need to organize their family lives around the service member’s career demands. A
hallmark of military family life, particularly during the past decade and a half of overseas
military engagement, is repeated separation from the service member parent due to deployment
and training. Separations tend to be unpredictable and uncontrollable, with little notice and often
with minimal information about the service member’s destination or return. In this context of
uncertainty, families may struggle to develop patterns of communicating, problem-solving,
decision-making, and dividing instrumental and emotional labor. This renegotiation of family
roles is particularly challenging because, when parental absence is temporary, families anticipate
a reunion which will likely reverse or alter patterns that were adaptive during absence (see
Rodriguez & Margolin, 2015a). Though most military families are resilient, the demands for
constant adaptation appear to take a toll on the mental health of a substantial minority of military
family members (Chandra et al., 2010; Flake et al., 2009; Lester et al., 2010; Mansfield,
Kaufman, Engel, & Gaynes, 2011). Moreover, when mental health concerns tend to co-occur
within families, elevated distress among spouses relates to similarly elevated struggles for
children (Kelley, 1994; Lester et al., 2010). Yet no studies to date have assessed mechanisms that
account for this within-family linkage in parent and youth mental health symptoms. The current
study, we test mothers’ negative emotion talk as one pathway by which military service absences
and at-home parent and youth mental health symptoms may be linked. We assess negative
emotional talk through a linguistic indicator of civilian parent-adolescent discussions about their
military-connected experiences.
Effects of Single and Recurrent Military Separations on Family Member Functioning
A growing literature on military families links family member distress to acute
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deployment experiences. Military deployments place considerable strain on the civilian spouse,
including increased parenting demands, financial concerns, and loneliness (Vormbrock, 1993).
Separation from a spouse due to military deployment has been linked to increases in depression,
loneliness, sleep problems, anxiety, anger, physical health problems, and acute stress symptoms
(Mansfield et al., 2010; Pincus, House, Christensen, & Adler, 2001; Wright, Burrell, Schroeder,
& Thomas, 2006). Recent studies suggest that up to one-third of children are at risk for clinically
significant problems during parental deployment, particularly anxiety (Flake et al., 2009; Lester
et al., 2010).
Although deployment-related child problems initially were considered transitory
and mild (e.g., Jensen, Xenakis, Wolf, & Bain, 1991), the longer and repeated deployments
characterizing recent conflicts appear to affect children more profoundly (Chartrand & Siegel,
2007; Mabe, 2009). A quantitative national study (Chandra et al., 2010) reported increasing
deployment-related adjustment problems associated with increasing child age. A variety of
mental health risks of parental deployment have been documented for adolescents, including:
suicidality, substance use, internalizing and externalizing symptoms, and general emotional
distress (Aranda, Middleton, Flake, & Davis, 2011; Cederbaum et al., 2014; Chandra et al., 2010;
Gilreath, Cederbaum, Astor, Benbenishty et al., 2013; Gilreath, Astor, Cederbaum, Atuel, &
Benbenishty, 2013; Reed, Bell, & Edwards, 2011). Qualitative (i.e., interview and focus group)
studies of adolescents’ reactions to deployment attest to diverse emotional responses, but note
that increased worry and sadness are common (e.g., Houston et al., 2009; Mmari, Roche,
Sudhinaraset, & Blum, 2009).
Despite increasing information on the psychosocial risks of deployment, little is known
about the broader context of recurrent intermittent parent absence for military families.
Specifically, what are the effects of repeated temporary parent absence on the family members
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who are home and on overall family functioning? Studies that operationalize absence beyond the
deployed/non-deployed distinction typically use an index of total time deployed or total number
of deployments; these studies consistently find elevated risk for youth mental health symptoms
associated with cumulative time deployed or number of recurrent deployments (Cederbaum et
al., 2014; Lester et al., 2010). One recent investigation (Rodriguez & Margolin, 2015b) expanded
the assessment of service-connected absences beyond deployment to include: (a) cumulative
time away (due to trainings, temporary assignments, and deployment); and (b) number of
significant family life events missed by the service member. In this study, the service member’s
cumulative time away over a 5-year timeframe was associated with spouse symptoms of anxiety
and depression beyond the effect of the number of recent deployments; by contrast, elevated
youth depression was linked to significant life events the service member missed. Whereas prior
investigations advance our understanding of what dimensions of absence are influential for
family members’ well-being, little evidence exists to characterize the psychosocial mechanisms
through which these dimensions exert that influence.
Transmission of Risk from Civilian Parent to Child
Temporary parent absence does not merely exert effects on individual family members,
but may profoundly alter how family members relate to one another both during the acute
separation phase and across chronic/recurrent absence experiences (Rodriguez & Margolin,
2015a). Thus, adolescents in military families are subjected to both direct risks (i.e., experiences
of absence resulting in elevated distress) and indirect risks – through broader changes in patterns
of family communication, problem-solving, and role assignments – for maladaptation. A large
body of research (e.g., Erel, Margolin, & John, 1998; Margolin, Gordis, & Oliver, 2004; Proctor,
Fauchier, Oliver, Ramos, Rios, & Margolin, 2007; Repetti, 1994; Repetti & Wood, 1997) has
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documented the spillover of stress generated in one family subsystem (e.g., the marital
subsystem) to another subsystem (e.g., the parent-child relationship). Strain within the marital
relationship can lead to preoccupation or distress that restricts the availability of emotional and
tangible resources for parenting (Davies & Cummings, 1998; Katz & Gottman, 1996).
Thus,
when families encounter stressful life circumstances, poor parental adjustment to the stressor has
the potential to place children at risk for maladjustment by diminishing the quality and reliability
of parenting (Benson, Buehler, & Gerard, 2008; Gordis, Margolin, & John, 2001).
Studies of military families during deployment suggest the presence of such spillover
effects; children in these families are more likely to exhibit affective and behavioral problems if
their non-military parent reports high levels of distress (Chandra et al., 2010; Flake et al., 2009;
Jensen, Martin, & Watanabe, 1996; Lester, Stein, Saltzman, Woodward, MacDermid, et al.,
2013).
Communication between youth and parents is presumed to be the medium by which this
distress is transmitted. To date, direct observational studies of parent-adolescent communication
behaviors within military-connected families have focused only on the service members’
communication, for example, showing that service members’ reported experiential avoidance (a
hallmark of PTSD symptomatology) was associated with less observed positive engagement and
more observed distress avoidance in parent-child interactions (Brockman et al., 2016) and that
number of months deployed – but not combat experiences or PTSD symptoms – were associated
with less effective observed parenting behaviors (Davis, Hanson, Zamir, Gewirtz, & DeGarmo,
2015). It is equally important to assess communication between the civilian parent-child dyad as
those family members mutually navigate the temporary absences of the service member parent.
Negative Emotion in Parent-Child Communication
Out of the many important facets of parent-child communication, the emotional tone of
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discussions is a key dimension that affects children’s wellbeing. Adolescent perceptions of
parental negative emotional expressiveness and negative emotional family climate have been
established as risk factors for youth internalizing symptoms (Luebbe & Bell, 2014; Stocker,
Richmond, Rhoades, & Kiang, 2007). In an early focus group study of military-connected
adolescents (Huebner et al., 2007), one-third of the sample described emotional negativity with
the civilian parent-child relationship as a primary challenge during periods of service member
absence. To the extent that repeated temporary absences of the service member parent occur in a
civilian parent-adolescent context with high levels of negative emotional communication, youth
may be at elevated risk for mental health symptoms.
In the present study, we investigate the role of civilian mothers’ emotional
communications that are expressed to the youth during a discussion about military family life.
As contrasted with youth self-reported perceptions of parents’ emotional communication that
have been the focus of other studies, we directly observe parent-adolescent discussions to assess
these risk processes as they naturally emerge in family talk. This method also minimizes the
possibility that correlations between measures of youth symptom and youth perceptions of
emotion communication are inflated by common method variance or by mood-dependent rating
of items. We submit our discussions to Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC; Pennebaker,
Booth, & Francis, 2007), a linguistic analysis to obtain a well-validated, objective assessment of
mothers’ use of emotional words. Emotional language, as detected by LIWC, has been associated
with indices of acute individual stress; following the September 11 attacks, LIWC analyses of
blog posts demonstrated an increase in negative emotion words and decrease in positive emotion
words (Cohn, Mehl, & Pennebaker, 2004). In female trauma survivors’ narratives, LIWC
emotion words capture content dimensions that are more predictive of psychological symptoms
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than subjective raters’ perceptions of narrative coherence or structure (Jaeger, Lindblom, Parker-
Guilbert, & Zoellner, 2014). Interestingly, LIWC indices have also been linked to PTSD
symptom severity even when non-trauma narratives are assessed (Papini, Yoon, Rubin, Lopez-
Castro, & Hien, 2015), suggesting the power of the method for capturing important
psychological processes in more naturalistic language use. Robbins, Mehl, Smith, & Weihs
(2013) found links between LIWC emotion words during triadic family discussions and family
functioning among families of cancer patients. Specifically, spouses’ positive emotion words
were associated with higher ratings of family cohesion, patients’ negative emotion words were
linked to elevated family conflict, and family members’ expressions of specific classes of
negative emotion words (e.g., sadness, anxiety, anger) were linked to family conflict and
patients’ depressive symptoms.
The Current Study
The primary purpose of the current study is to use discussions between civilian mothers
and their adolescent youth to investigate the role of mothers’ emotional communication to youth
in adolescent youth’s adaptation to active-duty military service. In this first direct assessment of
parent-adolescent communication behavior within an active-duty military family sample, we
assess the civilian parent-adolescent relationship as a domain of risk for youth developing mental
health symptoms. We focus on the role of civilian mothers’ use of negative emotion words as a
possible mechanism of transmission of distress from mother to adolescent, employing an
objective linguistic measure of emotion talk that explicitly separates emotional process from
content. Moreover, we assess the role of mother negative emotion talk within the broader context
of a history of service member temporary absence.
Figure 1 depicts the pathways of interest in highlighting the role of mother-to-youth
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negative emotion. For clarity and sample size, we test our hypothesized model in four separate
steps. Our first research question investigates the link between service member absence and
mothers’ negative emotion toward youth. We hypothesize (Hypothesis 1) that mother symptoms
will mediate associations between service member absence and mother negative emotion (Path
A) such that higher service member absence will lead to greater mother internalizing symptoms
(Path B) and, in turn, mother symptoms will be associated with mother emotional negativity in
the discussion (Path C). Our second hypothesis (Hypothesis 2) posits that mother negative
emotion will mediate associations between temporary father absence and youth symptoms (Path
D) such that father absence leads to mothers’ negative communication (Path A) and
consequently to youth symptoms (Path E). Our third hypothesis (Hypothesis 3) predicts that
mother negative emotion will mediate the association found in prior research between mother
symptoms and youth symptoms (Path F) such that higher mother symptoms will lead to greater
mother negative emotion (Path C) during the discussion which will in turn lead to higher youth
internalizing symptoms (Path E). Finally, in a complete model combining all pathways, we test
our final hypothesis (Hypothesis 4) that mother symptoms and mother negative emotion will
mediate the association between temporary father absence and youth symptoms (Path D) such
that father absence leads to increased maternal symptoms (Path B) which lead to increased
mother negative emotion (Path C), which finally lead to higher youth internalizing symptoms
(Path E). .
Method
Participants
The current study assessed 80 mother-adolescent dyads from active-duty United States
military families residing in Southern California. Dyads were eligible if they had: (a) a
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father/husband serving on active duty, (b) a mother not currently on active duty, (c) a child aged
14-18, and (d) ability to complete study measures in English. Families were recruited through
advertisements in military newsletters/social media/websites, announcements via military
support agencies, flyers posted in base hospitals/clinics, and referrals from study participants.
Participating youth (n = 37 male) ranged in age from 14.0 to 18.9 (M = 16.0, SD = 1.2); mothers
averaged 40.2 years of age (SD = 5.0, range 31.6-53.0). Approximately one-third of youth and
mothers self-identified as Hispanic/Latino (31.4%). In terms of race, 63.7% self-identified as
White/Caucasian, 4.4% as American Indian or Alaska Native, 2.5% as Asian, 1.3% as Native
Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, 5.0% as Black/African-American, and 20.6% as multiracial. Ninety
percent of mothers had attended some college, and 41.3% had completed at least a bachelor’s
degree or equivalent; 35% worked for pay outside the home.
In over one-third of participant families (33.8%, n = 27), the service member was the
youth’s stepfather; among these families, the youth reported an average of 10.6 years of co-
residence with the service member (SD = 4.2, range = 3.0-17.5). Families averaged 2.7 children
in the home (SD = 1.0, range = 1-6), including the target youth, and the majority of target youth
was eldest child (82.5%). Forty-nine percent of families lived in military housing. Most service
member parents were serving in the U.S. Marine Corps (48.8%) or Navy (40.0%). In our sample,
23.8% of service members were mid-grade enlisted personnel (E4-E6), 40% were senior enlisted
(E7-E9), 16.3% were junior officers (O1-O3), and 20% were senior officers (O4-O6). Service
members had deployed an average of 4.3 times (SD = 3.4, range 0-18). Four service members
had never deployed, and eight were deployed at the time of the interview. Thirteen mothers
(16.3%) were veterans/retirees of the U.S. military.
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Procedures for Data Collection and Preparation
Mother-adolescent dyads were assessed in a 2 1/2 hour meeting in their homes without
the presence of the service member. The University Institutional Review Board approved study
procedures; adult participants (mothers and youth > age 18) provided written informed consent
and other youth provided assent. Dyads were first interviewed conjointly about the service
member’s service-connected absences (e.g., deployment, training, temporary duty assignment)
during the previous five years, using the Timeline Followback Military Family Interview
(TFMFI; Rodriguez & Margolin, 2015b). Following the TFMFI, dyads had two separate 10-
minute videotaped discussions, without the experimenter present, about: (a) current issues that
were causing conflict in the mother-youth relationship, and (b) their experiences as a military
family. Discussion order was counterbalanced across families. The discussion about the family’s
experiences as a military family, which is the focus of the current analyses, was guided by the
following verbal instructions: “We would like you to discuss the things you have experienced as
a family related to your family member’s military service. You may speak about any experience
– or multiple experiences – that have been meaningful to either of you or to your family as a
whole.” Following the discussion task, mothers and adolescents used laptop computers provided
by the experimenter to privately complete a number of questionnaires, including measures of
mothers’ and youths’ current internalizing symptoms.
Each of the discussions was transcribed verbatim by one of six trained undergraduate
research assistants. One military experience discussion failed to record, so only 79 discussions
could be transcribed for the current analyses. Following transcription, text files were cleaned and
prepared for submission to LIWC (Pennebaker et al., 2007) automated text analysis program
according to the guidance in the LIWC operator manual. Each transcript was cleaned by one of a
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team of four research assistants and checked for accuracy by another team member; the first
author resolved any discrepancies. The cleaned and checked text files were then submitted to
LIWC, which calculates the proportion of words within each participant’s sample (relative to the
total words in that conversational sample) that matched entries in its dictionaries for the
linguistic category of interest.
Measures
Mother Negative Emotion. For the current analyses, we used LIWC to extract a score for
mothers’ use of negative emotion (e.g., “worst” “scared” “sorry” “agitated” “hurt”; 499 total
words in LIWC dictionary) and positive emotion words (e.g., “glad” “thank” “lucky” “happy”;
406 total words). LIWC provides these as a count of the number of words in a given speech
sample that matched the words and word forms in its emotion dictionaries; these scores are
expressed as a proportion of the total number of words in the speech sample. A recent validity
study (Bantum & Owen, 2009) attested to LIWC’s utility for rapid detection of emotional
expression, and reported good overall measures of sensitivity to general emotion (.88) and
negative emotion (.78) relative to human raters’ evaluations.
In our sample, on average, negative emotion words comprised just over 1% of mothers’
total speech and positive emotion words comprised nearly 4% (see Table 1). Measures of central
tendency for the observed LIWC emotion variables in this study were similar to those reported
for speech samples by Pennebaker, Chung, Ireland, Gonzales, & Booth (2007), suggesting that
these conversations were fairly typical speech samples in their average proportions of positive
and negative emotion words. To best characterize the emotional tone of the discussion, we
calculated a ratio of negative emotion words to positive emotion words by dividing the
proportion of negative emotion words by the proportion of positive emotion words. This index
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highlights the variability in maternal emotion communication; mothers in our sample ranged
from speaking one negative word for every fifty positive words to speaking over two and a half
times as many negative words as positive words. Two mothers did not use any negative emotion
words during their discussions; in these cases, we substituted the next lowest value for negative
emotion words from our sample to allow us to calculate a more meaningful ratio. Analyses using
this substitution did not substantially differ from analyses on the raw ratios.
Military Absence Variables. Using the TFMFI calendar-assisted interview to establish
dates when the service member was absent from the home (see Rodriguez & Margolin, 2015b),
we assessed the service member’s cumulative time absent (due to deployment, training,
temporary duty, etc.) and important family events missed during absence. We created a
composite by standardizing these two variables and summing the standardized scores.
Mother Internalizing Symptoms. Mothers completed a 20-item version of the Beck
Depression Inventory II (BDI-II, α = .92; suicidal ideation item omitted) and the 21-item Beck
Anxiety Inventory (BAI, α = .92) to report on their symptoms of depression and anxiety,
respectively. Fourteen mothers skipped 20 BDI-II items (1.3% missing) and four mothers
skipped seven BAI items (0.4%). Mothers’ depression and anxiety scores correlated strongly at r
= .78. We used mean imputation to create participants’ total scores per measure; we then
standardized the BDI and BAI scores and summed them to create a composite measure of
mothers’ internalizing symptoms.
Youth Internalizing Symptoms. Youth completed the 47-item Revised Children’s
Anxiety and Depression Scale (RCADS; Chorpita et al., 2000), which assesses symptoms of five
DSM-IV-TR anxiety disorders and major depressive disorder (α = .94). This measure has
demonstrated strong one-week test-retest reliability in adolescents (subscale reliabilities ranged
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from .63 – .85) and correlates strongly with other established measures of youth symptoms (e.g.,
for adolescents major depression subscale correlated with CDI at r = .78 and RCADS GAD
subscale correlated with RCMAS Worry subscale at r = .70; see Chorpita et al., 2000).
Participants were permitted to skip any items they preferred not to answer; 28 RCADS items
(0.7%) were skipped across 17 youth. Mean imputation was done at the subscale level before we
summed across all items to create participants’ total score.
Analytic Plan
Path analysis was conducted with Mplus 7.3 (Muthén & Muthén, 2012) to assess study
hypotheses. We used the ML estimator and full-information maximum likelihood estimation. To
assess model fit, we scrutinized the following fit indices: maximum likelihood χ
2
, Comparative
Fit Index (CFI), root mean squared error of approximation (RMSEA), and standardized root-
mean-square residual (SRMR). Non-significant χ
2
statistic, CFI values of .90 or greater, and
RMSEA and SRMR values of less than .08 were our criteria for close model fit. We assessed
significance of our hypothesized indirect effects using bias-corrected percentile bootstrap
confidence intervals (based on 1,000 bootstrap samples). In our models, we included stepfamily
status and number of recent deployments on an a priori basis as covariates of mother negative
emotion and of youth internalizing symptoms. To maximize our power to detect effects given
our small sample size, and for clarity of explanation of our effects, we fit a series of models –
one per hypothesis – each of which included only the variables required to assess the simple
mediation effect predicted and the two covariates.
Results
Descriptives for the study variables are included in Table 1. Bivariate associations among
the study variables are presented in Table 2. Mother negative emotion words were positively
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associated with mother and youth symptoms and with the number of recent deployments. The
father absence composite was positively associated with mother symptoms but not associated
with youth symptoms. Mother symptoms and youth symptoms were not significantly associated.
Finally, youth symptoms were negatively associated with stepfamily status.
Our first model, which tested Hypothesis 1, provided close fit to the data χ
2
(2) = 2.89, p
= .23, CFI = .97, RMSEA = .07, SRMR = .04. As anticipated, we found that service member
absence was significantly positively associated with mother symptoms (B = .39, β = .34, p =
.001), and that mother symptoms were positively associated with mother negative emotion (B =
.09, β = .44, p = .002). The direct effect associating father absence with mother negative emotion
words was not significant (B = -.03, β = -.13, p = .34). Finally, the hypothesized indirect effect of
father absence on mother negative emotion words via mother symptoms was significant
(standardized indirect effect = .15, p = .02; 90% CI [.07, .29]).
Our second model was fully saturated, and thus no fit statistics are reported. We did not
find support for Hypothesis 2. Although mother negative emotion was significantly positively
associated with youth symptoms (B = 15.5, β = .34, p = .001), service member absence was not
associated with mother negative emotion (B = .01, β = .06, p = .61). The direct effect of service
member absence on youth symptoms was not significant (B = 1.15, β = .11, p = .31) nor was the
indirect effect via mother negative emotion (standardized indirect effect = .02, p = .64; 90% CI [-
.04, .10]).
Hypothesis 3 was supported. This model was also fully saturated. As reported above,
mother symptoms were positively associated with mother negative emotion (B = .08, β = .41, p =
.002 in this model) and mother negative emotion was positively associated with youth symptoms
(B = 15.12, β = .34, p = .003). The hypothesized indirect effect of mother symptoms on youth
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symptoms via mother negative emotion words was significant (standardized indirect effect = .14,
p = .02; 90% CI [.06, .26]), and the direct effect associating mother symptoms with youth
symptoms was not significant (B = .32, β = .04, p = .76).
Our final, overall model provided close fit to the data, χ
2
(2) = 2.89, p = .24, CFI = .98,
RMSEA = .07, SRMR = .04. This model (Figure 2) provided support for Hypothesis 4 in that the
indirect effect of father absence on youth symptoms via mother symptoms and mother negative
emotion words was significant (standardized indirect effect = .05, p = .049; 90% CI [.02, .12]).
By contrast, the direct effect of father absence on youth symptoms was not significant (B = 1.20,
β = .12, p = .36).
Discussion
Our study of active-duty mother-adolescent communication processes provides one of the
first assessments of family behavior in the context of temporary military-connected parent
absence. We found support for our hypotheses that the impacts of temporary parent absence on
youth mental health symptoms would be mediated by maternal mental health symptoms and the
emotional content of mothers’ talk during a discussion of military experiences. This investigation
provides preliminary support for a previously untested explanation for the heterogeneity in the
expression of youth mental health symptoms in the context of parental military service absence.
The military family research literature to date has described only the co-occurrence of mother
and youth symptoms (e.g., Kelley, 1994; Lester et al., 2010); this study provides initial empirical
evidence to support hypothesized mechanisms of spillover within the military family context that
may account for these patterns of co-occurrence. Phenomenologically, these results point to
compounding psychosocial risks to youth when the service member parent has been more
persistently absent and civilian parent-adolescent communication is more affectively negative.
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Parental Expression of Negative Emotion and Youth Symptoms
Prior research has assessed parental expression of negative emotions, with mixed effects
on youth psychosocial outcomes; some studies – in accordance with ours – have implicated
maternal expressiveness of negative emotion as either a predictor of youth internalizing and
externalizing difficulties (Luebbe & Bell, 2014; Ramsden & Hubbard, 2002; Stocker, Richmond,
Rhoades, & Kiang, 2007) or as a mediator of associations between parent and youth depression
(Cummings, Cheung, Koss, & Davies, 2014). These studies support the interpretation that a
globally negative emotional climate within a family is a potent risk factor for youth developing
mental health symptoms. These studies have tended to utilize parent or youth self-reports as their
measures of perceived parental emotional expressiveness; thus, our study represents a step
towards more objective assessment of parental emotion expression. In fact, our linguistic
measure of emotional content is an advance in several ways: (1) it minimizes the likelihood that
measurement will be biased by the mood of the family member, (2) it also removes the potential
for bias due to subjectivity in observational raters’ assessments (particularly if, as in the case of
videotaped assessments, nonverbal affective expressions may be more salient than verbal
content), and (3) as we have calculated it, our measure of negative emotion is negative emotion
relative to positive emotion expression, which provides some specificity. As such, our results
bolster findings that more maternal negative emotional content during discussions about military
family experiences appear to index risk for child (and mother) mental health symptoms.
On the other hand, several investigations have found protective or beneficial effects of
parental negative emotion expression on youth well-being (e.g., Marin, Bohanek, & Fivush,
2008; Pasalich et al., 2012) or negative youth correlates of inhibited parental expression of
negative emotions (e.g., Katz & Hunter, 2007); authors of these studies commonly argue that
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parental negative emotional expressions – at least under some conditions or at a moderate level
of intensity – may facilitate parental modeling of adaptive emotion regulation skills. However,
many of these investigations have primarily focused on parental responses to the child’s
emotions. These and related studies point out some of the important limitations of our linguistic
measure of emotions. The LIWC textual analysis approach divorces content from context, and as
such, we cannot determine on the basis of the current data whether mothers’ negative emotion
words pertained to descriptions of their own affective state or of the youth’s affective state (or,
for that matter, the emotions of the service members or other family members or nonfamily
social contacts). Relatedly, we have little understanding of the function of this emotion talk –
whether mothers were speaking to “unload” or “vent” their negative feelings, to adaptively
express their emotions and thus model this process to youth, or to engage directly with emotions
expressed by youth (whether positively or negatively).
In fact, very few studies have simultaneously assessed the possible functions of parent-
child emotion process, particularly in reference to a shared stressor. One of these exceptional
studies employed a family reminiscing paradigm similar to what we assessed in the current
study, and asked families to co-construct narratives about negative shared past experiences
(Marin, Bohanek, & Fivush, 2008). The researchers found evidence that collaborative
discussions of specific negative emotional responses (e.g., “anger” versus more global affective
evaluations such as “uncomfortable” or “difficult”) were associated with higher self-perceptions
of competence among preadolescents. This suggests a few future directions for our analyses,
including the addition and/or comparison of additional linguistic measures (e.g., specific emotion
words, pronouns [i.e., to assess whose emotions are the focus of the discussion]) to further
clarify which types of negative emotion expression may be particularly linked to mental health
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risk. In addition, as our “family reminiscing” task was less structured than that in Marin et al.
(2008), it would be important to assess the various ways in which families approached the task
(e.g., to make meaning, to share opinions, to influence one another’s perceptions).
Features of the Sample Impacting Interpretations of Effects
Families who participated in our study were all connected to the active-duty component
of the armed forces, and were generally families in which the service member parent was
pursuing military service as a career and had been serving prior to the adolescent’s birth (mean
years of service in our sample was 18.5, SD = 5.4); our sample thus differs from previous
investigations, which have focused on military families with younger children and with a shorter
service history. As such, this study is uniquely positioned to provide preliminary evidence
regarding possible longer-term impacts of military service on family functioning. To the extent
that family relational patterns are transformed by the repeated absences of the service member,
families such as those in our sample who have chronically endured separations may provide us
some evidence of the impacts of service that extend beyond a single deployment.
As this study was not a study of acute separation from the service member parent due to
deployment, our findings do not directly address the question of how a current deployment may
affect patterns of family communication. Only a small portion of our sample (n = 8) were
currently experiencing deployment, and these mother-adolescent dyads did not significantly
differ from non-deployed dyads on any of the study measures of interest. This study also focuses
specifically upon relationship dynamics among the “civilian” family members rather than upon
family relationships that include the service member. This was an intentional methodological
choice for our study, as we wished to study mechanisms of risk and resilience within a dyad that
had mutually negotiated periods of service member absence and presence. As such, we do not
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have direct measures of service member symptoms or service member behaviors; although 14
families reported significant service member mental health symptoms, these families did not
differ from other participant families on any of our study variables. Other investigations
(Brockman et al., 2016; Davis et al., 2015) have provided some initial data on family functioning
that includes the service member, but these investigations have not yet included assessment of
impacts upon youth well-being.
Limitations
The cross-sectional nature of our study limits our ability to draw causal inferences from
the data, particularly in that family member symptoms and communication dimensions were
assessed at the same home visit. Bidirectional influences between parent symptoms and
communication and youth symptoms and communication are thus plausible. As noted above,
although youth symptoms were anticipated to result from higher mother negative emotion, is also
likely that mothers of more anxious/depressed youth discussed more negative material related to
youth emotional responses. Finally, although we also posited that service member absence
increased maternal distress, it is also possible that mothers who were more distressed reported
higher extent of service member absence and recalled more difficulties related to events the
service member missed. Again, we utilized a timeline interview to enhance the degree and
specificity of participants’ recall, but we ultimately relied upon the dyads’ recollections of
service member absence, which cannot be fully disentangled from their potentially mood-
dependent perceptions of service member absence.
Future Directions
The current study suggests several important directions for research in the area of
military family communication patterns. Here we focused on a single possible mechanism of risk
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in mother-adolescent communication. A more comprehensive description of these processes
would include bi-directional processes of emotion/distress transmission (i.e., mother-to-youth
and youth-to-mother) that account for the active involvement of adolescent children in shaping
their family relationships (Cook, Kenny, & Goldstein, 1991; McGue, Elkins, Walden, & Iacono,
2005). In addition, as noted above, negative emotional expression is only one proposed
mechanism by which mothers may transmit distress to their children; maladaptive (e.g.,
invalidating or dismissive) responses to child emotion or emotional unavailability (e.g.,
withdrawal) are other possible explanatory mechanisms worthy of future research attention
among military families. Prospective longitudinal research on these families would also elucidate
whether the observed communication patterns are a result of family member symptoms or a
contributor to family member psychosocial distress. Although we have described one pathway of
risk, future studies should also assess indices of resilience, particularly as a majority of military
families appear to adapt rather well to the demands of active-duty service (e.g. Flake et al.,
2009). Finally, in addition to assessing intra-individual distress as we have here, future
investigations could also assess the influence of relational distress, including, for example, the
influence of marital distress on parent-child communication patterns and relational distress.
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Pasalich, D. S., Dadds, M. R., Vincent, L. C., Cooper, F. A., Hawes, D. J., & Brennan, J. (2012).
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313. doi: 10.1080/15374416.2012.668844
Pennebaker, J.W., Booth, R.J., & Francis, M.E. (2007). Linguistic inquiry and word count:
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Pincus, S.H., House, R., Christensen, J. & Adler, L.E. (2001, April-June). The emotional cycle of
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Repetti, R.L. (1994). Short-term and long-term processes linking job stressors to father-child
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Repetti, R.L. & Wood, J. (1997). Effects of daily stress at work on mothers' interactions with
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Rodriguez, A.J. & Margolin, G. (2015a). Parental incarceration, transnational migration, and
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absence. Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review, 18, 24-49. doi: 10.1007/s10567-
014-0176-0
Rodriguez, A. J., & Margolin, G. (2015b). Military service absences and family members’
mental health: A timeline followback assessment. Journal of Family Psychology, 29,
642-648. doi: 10.1037/fam0000102
Stocker, C. M., Richmond, M. K., Rhoades, G. K., & Kiang, L. (2007). Family emotional
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Wright, K.M., Burrell, L.M., Schroeder, E.D. & Thomas, J.L. (2006). Military spouses: Coping
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Table 1. Descriptives for Raw Study Variables
Variable N Median M SD Range
LIWC Negative/Positive Ratio 79 0.29 0.39 0.38 0.02-2.67
LIWC Negative Emotion 79 1.04 1.20 0.75 0.16-4.13
LIWC Positive Emotion 79 3.65 3.81 1.33 0.90-7.80
Youth Internalizing 79 30.00 31.70 17.06 2.00-90.00
Mother Internalizing Composite 80 -0.39 0.00 1.88 -1.85-8.12
Mother BDI 80 8.40 10.39 9.40 0.00-48.30
Mother BAI 80 4.00 6.61 8.91 0.00-43.05
Service Member Absence Composite 80 -0.41 0.00 1.66 -2.62-4.43
Time Away (in months) 80 14.38 15.50 9.45 1.50-50.00
Events Missed 80 4.00 4.85 3.75 0.00-16.00
Number Recent Deployments 80 1.00 1.25 0.93 0.00-6.00
Note. LIWC Variable values are expressed as a percentage of the mothers’ total words spoken
during the discussion. All Service Member absence variables were assessed for the five years
prior to the interview date.
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Table 2. Bivariate Pearson Correlations Among Study Variables
Note.
†
p < .10, * p < .05, ** p < .01.
Variable 1 2 3 4 5
1. Mother Negative Emotion --
2. Youth Internalizing .24* --
3. Mom Internalizing .40** .17 --
4. Service Member Absence Composite .13 .04 .34** --
5. Number of Recent Deployments .27* -.05 -.01 .24
†
--
6. Stepfamily .08 -.26* .04 -.06 .06
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Figure 1. Hypothesized Path Model
Note. In the figure above, the dashed lines A, D, and F represent associations hypothesized to be nonsignificant in the final model.
B
C
E
A
F
D
Temporary Father
Absence
Mother-to-Youth
Negative Emotion
Mother Symptoms
Youth Symptoms
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Figure 2. Final Path Model
Note. * p < .05, ** p < .01. Model fit statistics: χ
2
(2) = 2.89, p = .24, CFI = .98, RMSEA = .07, SRMR = .04. Standardized
coefficients are reported. Dashed lines represent nonsignificant paths.
.34**
.44**
.36**
-.13
-.01
.12
Temporary Father
Absence
Mother Negative
Emotion Talk
R
2
= .29*
Mother Symptoms
R
2
= .12
Youth Symptoms
R
2
= .24**
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General Discussion
This dissertation project and the portfolio of studies presented here were designed and
conducted to assess and describe family process variables that would better explain the impact—
both positive and negative—of military service on family functioning. Despite a rapidly growing
literature on static predictors, such as deployment, and self-reported outcomes, such as mental
health symptoms, in family members of military service members, the studies presented here
focus on more nuanced and dynamic processes of risk and resilience. Toward this end, we had
three main aims: (1) to assess impacts of multiple dimensions of parent absence on family
member symptoms, (2) to investigate adolescents’ instrumental and emotional support of their
civilian mothers as they relate to adolescent depression symptoms, and (3) to describe mothers’
negative emotion communication as a spillover mechanism linking parent absence and family
members’ symptoms.
The military youth in our study, similar to previous investigations, did not appear to be at
significantly elevated risk for mental health symptoms relative to general population norms (20%
of youth [n = 16] achieved a t-score ≥ 65 on any subscale of the RCADS). This suggests that, on
the whole, military adolescents manage the challenges of military family life well and that
psychosocial interventions for these youth are no more warranted than for youth in the general
population. However, we did document a few specific domains of risk for our sample of military
adolescents in active duty families. First, youth were at elevated risk for depressive symptoms
when they reported a higher number of family life events occurring during periods of the service
member parent’s military absences (paper 1). Second, youth were at elevated risk for
internalizing symptoms when their mothers used higher rates of negative emotion words during a
discussion about military life experiences (paper 3). We also found that mothers’ depression
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symptoms attenuated the protective effects of youth instrumental support behaviors on youth
depression symptoms (paper 2). Finally, we found a trend-level association between youth self-
reported emotional support of their mothers and youth depression (paper 2).
However, we also found several variables among these military youth that indexed lower
risk for psychosocial symptoms. The approximately one-third of youth our sample who were
stepchildren of the service member reported lower symptoms overall. In addition, and somewhat
surprisingly, number of recent deployments was negatively associated with youth anxiety. We
found evidence that youth who had more frequent contact with their fathers during the most
recent deployment were protected in that they did not evidence any association between service
member time away and current anxiety symptoms (paper 1). In addition, current youth
instrumental support of their mother was associated with lower youth depression symptoms, as
were observer ratings of youth emotionally supportive behaviors during a discussion with their
mothers (paper 2).
There were also several hypotheses that we tested but failed to find support for in our
sample. Perhaps most notably, mother and youth symptoms were not significantly associated
(although the coefficient was positive). This contrasts with the majority of previous research on
military families, which has suggested maternal distress as a primary risk factor for youth
psychosocial symptoms. We also failed to find any impact of general military service demands
on the associations between youth supportive behavior and youth depressive symptoms (paper 2)
and also found no evidence of significant direct effects of temporary father absence on youth
symptoms or on mother negative emotion talk in our models assessing spillover (paper 3).
Future Research Directions
Our project focuses on exploring family dynamics within active-duty families who were
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generally not experiencing a deployment; this contrasts with the majority of existing studies on
military families, which have focused on acute deployment and/or reintegration phases. Future
research is required to bridge these domains of inquiry, and to more fully explore the differential
or common impacts of concurrent parent absence and historical parent absence. Furthermore,
longitudinal research will be required to explain whether and how families shift their patterns of
interaction over the course of multiple periods of parent absence. Of course, military service
exerts demands upon active duty families beyond cycles of service member departure and return;
additional sources of stress and transition (e.g., residential moves, changes in schooling,
relocation to foreign installations, changes in service member rank/duties, physical and mental
health changes for the service member) must be incorporated into future investigations to
provide a more complete picture of how these families adapt to their participation within the
military system.
In addition, our project has pointed out some of the points of contact between military
service history and family/youth developmental stage. In our study, youth had generally been
military dependents since birth and had likely grown accustomed to the rhythms of military life;
to the extent that youth expectations for their own and other family members’ behavior have
been shaped by lifelong exposure to military culture, many of the transitions these youth
experience may be viewed as natural. For example, as compared to the National Guard and
Reserve families who are often a focus of research and who are typically experiencing their first
exposures to deployment and to warfare, many youth in our study were infants or preschoolers at
the time of the service member’s first deployment. More research is needed to assess how family
members subjectively perceive military and family demands, including shifting roles and
responsibilities. Many families in our study were also approaching a major shared transition in
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family organization and functioning: retirement and separation from active duty service. The
potential for mismatch between family processes developed to facilitate active-duty life and the
experiences that characterize civilian life suggests that this transition may pose unique challenges
for long-time active duty families.
We have only begun to investigate relational spillover mechanisms that explain
psychosocial risks experienced by military family members. The theoretical literatures and the
empirical literatures on non-military family systems suggest a wide array of risky and resilient
family processes; little information exists to guide predictions about whether these processes
function similarly or differently in military families. An important area for future investigation is
the spillover of distress occurring within relationships (e.g., marital strain) rather than merely
within individuals (e.g., mother depression). Relatedly, relationship expectations cultivated in
parents’ families-of-origin likely influence how well parents – and by extension, children – adapt
to separation/reunion and to change more generally.
Implications for Family Risk and Resilience Processes
Active-duty military families face some specific and very real psychosocial risks to both
individual and relational well-being, especially during periods of international warfare. However,
the risks due to wartime deployment overlay a military family lifestyle that is marked by ongoing
transition and possible stress, due to residential relocation, children changing schools, possible
overseas duty stations, changes in work opportunities for civilian parents and in work duties for
service member parents, and service member absences due to training and other temporary
assignments. My research, described in this dissertation portfolio, has elucidated impacts of
some of these challenges, in order to inform broader scientific knowledge on how families adapt
to and thrive even amidst periods of transition, uncertainty, and stress.
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References
For General Introduction & Discussion
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Boss, P. (2002). Family stress management. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
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experiential avoidance to postdeployment family reengagement. Journal of Family
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Davies, P.T. & Cummings, E.M. (1998). Exploring children's emotional security as a mediator of
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absence, ambiguous presence: A qualitative study of military reserve families in wartime.
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Journal of Family Psychology, 22, 222-230. doi: 10.1037/0893-3200.22.2.222
Flake, E. M., Davis, B. E., Johnson, P. L. & Middleton, L. S. (2009). The psychosocial effects of
deployment on military children. Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics,
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during Operation Desert Storm. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent
Psychiatry, 35, 433-441. doi:10.1097/00004583-199604000-00009
Lester, P., Peterson, K., Reeves, J., Knauss, L., et al. (2010). The long war and parental combat
deployment: Effects on military children and at-home spouses. Journal of the American
Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 49, 310-320. doi:
10.1016/j.jaac.2010.01.003
Lewinsohn, P.M., Hops, H., Roberts, R.E., Seeley, J.R., & Andrews, J.A. (1993). Adolescent
psychopathology: I. Prevalence and incidence of depression and other DSM-III-R
disorders in high school students. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 102, 133-144.
Mansfield, A. J., Kaufman, J. S., Engel, C. C., & Gaynes, B. N. (2011). Deployment and mental
health diagnoses among children of US Army personnel. Archives of Pediatrics and
Adolescent Medicine, 165, 999-1005. doi: 10.1001/archpediatrics.2011.123
Margolin, G., Gordis, E. B., & Oliver, P. H. (2004). Links between marital and parent-child
interactions: Moderating role of husband-to-wife aggression. Development and
psychopathology, 16, 753-771. doi: 10.1017/S0954579404004766
Repetti, R.L. (1994). Short-term and long-term processes linking job stressors to father-child
interaction. Social Development, 3, 1-15. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9507.1994.tb00020.x
Repetti, R.L. & Wood, J. (1997). Effects of daily stress at work on mothers' interactions with
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preschoolers. Journal of Family Psychology, 11, 90-108. doi: 10.1037/0893-3200.11.1.90
Rodriguez, A.J. & Margolin, G. (2015a). Parental incarceration, transnational migration, and
military deployment: Family mechanisms of youth adjustment to temporary parent
absence. Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review, 18, 24-49. doi: 10.1007/s10567-
014-0176-0
Rodriguez, A. J., & Margolin, G. (2015b). Military service absences and family members’
mental health: A timeline followback assessment. Journal of Family Psychology, 29,
642-648. doi: 10.1037/fam0000102
Saxbe, D.E., Rodriguez, A.J., & Margolin, G. (2012). Understanding family conflict: Theoretical
frameworks and directions for future research. In M.A. Fine & F.D. Fincham (Eds.)
Family theories: A content-based approach (pp. 169-189). New York: Routledge.
Wiens, T.W., & Boss, P. (2006). Maintaining family resiliency before, during, and after military
separation. In C.A. Castro, A.B. Adler, & C.A. Britt, (Eds.), Military life: The psychology
of serving in peace and combat (4 Vols.). Bridgeport, CT: Praeger Security International.
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Appendices
Timeline Followback Military Family Interview Forms ................................................ 113
Youth Self-Report Questionnaires ................................................................................... 116
Youth Background Questionnaire ............................................................................ 116
Helping Parents Questionnaire ................................................................................ 120
Parent Self-Report Background Questionnaire .............................................................. 123
Observational Coding Manual and Coder Rating Form ............................................... 129
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General Information
Is the service member (SM) currently on active duty, inactive, reserve or guard status?
_______ Active Duty ________ Inactive ________ Reserve _________ Guard
Which branch of the service does SM serve in?
______ Air Force _____ Army _____ Marines _____ Navy _____Coast Guard _____ National Guard
Is SM enlisted or commissioned (officer)?
______ Enlisted _______Commissioned _______Other (e.g., Warrant Officer; describe)
____________________________________________
What is (was) SM’s rank [Air Force, Marines, Army] or rate [Navy, Coast Guard]? [You may also show the appropriate
rank table to facilitate the participant’s memory.]
E- ____ (1-9) W-_____ (1-5) O-_____ (1-10)
What is SM’s specialization in the military? MOS (if known)?
Service History
When did SM first enlist in/receive a commission in the military? _______________ (Mo/Yr)
What are SM’s terms of service (e.g., 4 years, career/20 years)? ________________________
Do you remember any of the schools or trainings SM has completed over the past five years?
School Name/Description Location Approx Dates
1.
2.
3.
4.
During these training periods, SM missed the following events in the family’s life: [mark # of each]
____ Birth/Adoption/Pregnancy
____ Death
____ Marriage
____ Graduation (whose?)
____ Moves
____ Divorce/Separation (who?)
____ Major illness/injury (who?)
____ Family member moving in
____ Fam member moving out
____ Child started school (which?)
____ Financial gain/loss (circle)
____ New job/job loss (circle)
____ More/Less conflict
____Vacation
____ Other event:
How many times has SM been deployed? (Ever) _______ (past 5 years) ________
Which was hardest deployment for family?___________ How hard was most recent? (1= easiest to 5=hardest) ___
How many times has your family relocated/PCS’d/moved? (Ever) _______ (past 5 years) ________
Which was hardest move for family?___________ How hard was most recent? (1= easiest to 5=hardest) ___
How many schools has [youth] attended? (Ever)______ (past 5 years) _____
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NOW, WE’RE GOING TO GO THROUGH YOUR FAMILY MEMBER’S DEPLOYMENTS – WE’LL USE THESE
CALENDARS TO GET THE DETAILS OF ANY DEPLOYMENTS OVER THE PAST 5 YEARS. WE’LL START
WITH THE MOST RECENT DEPLOYMENT.
Most Recent Deployment War Related? Y / N
Deployment Location __________________ (country)
List cities, if known ______________________________________________________
Beginning __________ (month/year) End __________ (month/year) or Ongoing
What unit was he/she attached to? ______________________________________________________________
Description of Tasks/Initiatives, if known. Note locations and approximate dates whenever possible.
__________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________
Combat Exposure Y/N Service Injury Sustained Y/N Others in Unit Injured Y/N Others in Unit KIA/MIA Y/N
Medical Diagnosis (Post)_______________ Psychological Diagnosis (Post) ____________________
When & how did you find out SM was being deployed? __________________________________________
Before the deployment, did you attend predeployment briefings? Y/N
How else did you get information?_____________________________________________________
During the deployment, how much …
… contact/information from the military (e.g., FRO)?______________________________________
…contact/information from the SM? ___________________________________________________
After your family member returned, did you attend postdeployment briefs? Y/N
How else did you get information?_____________________________________________________
How much did SM discuss deployment experiences?_______________________________________
During this deployment, the SM missed the following events in the family’s life:
____ Birth/Adoption/Pregnancy
____ Death
____ Marriage
____ Graduation (whose?)
____ Moves
____ Divorce/Separation (who?)
____ Major illness/injury (who?)
____ Family member moving in
____ Fam member moving out
____ Child started school (which?)
____ Financial gain/loss (circle)
____ New job/job loss (circle)
____ More/Less conflict
____Vacation
____ Other event:
Did SM miss any important event in your life (e.g., big games, personal achievements)?
__________________________________________________________________________________________
Between this deployment and the previous deployment, where was SM stationed (e.g., name of base, city, state)
and what was he or she doing? _________________________________________________________________
On a scale of 1 (very safe) to 5 (very dangerous), how dangerous do you think this deployment was for SM? _____
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Previous Deployment #____ War Related? Y / N
Deployment Location __________________ (country)
List cities, if known ______________________________________________________
Beginning __________ (month/year) End __________ (month/year) or Ongoing
What unit was he/she attached to? ______________________________________________________________
Description of Tasks/Initiatives, if known. Note locations and approximate dates whenever possible.
__________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________
Combat Exposure Y/N Service Injury Sustained Y/N Others in Unit Injured Y/N Others in Unit KIA/MIA Y/N
Medical Diagnosis (Post)_______________ Psychological Diagnosis (Post) ____________________
When & how did you find out SM was being deployed? __________________________________________
Before the deployment, did you attend predeployment briefings? Y/N
How else did you get information?_____________________________________________________
During the deployment, how much …
… contact/information from the military (e.g., FRO)?______________________________________
…contact/information from the SM? ___________________________________________________
After your family member returned, did you attend postdeployment briefs? Y/N
How else did you get information?_____________________________________________________
How much did SM discuss deployment experiences?_______________________________________
During this deployment, the SM missed the following events in the family’s life:
____ Birth/Adoption/Pregnancy
____ Death
____ Marriage
____ Graduation (whose?)
____ Moves
____ Divorce/Separation (who?)
____ Major illness/injury (who?)
____ Family member moving in
____ Fam member moving out
____ Child started school (which?)
____ Financial gain/loss (circle)
____ New job/job loss (circle)
____ More/Less conflict
____Vacation
____ Other event:
Did SM miss any important event in your life (e.g., big games, personal achievements)?
__________________________________________________________________________________________
Between this deployment and the previous deployment, where was SM stationed (e.g., name of base, city, state)
and what was he or she doing? _________________________________________________________________
How hard was this deployment for family, on a scale of 1 (easiest deployment we’ve had) to 5 (hardest deployment
we’ve had)? ____
On a scale of 1 (very safe) to 5 (very dangerous), how dangerous do you think this deployment was for SM? _____
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Background & Family Characteristics - Youth
1. Gender: _____ Male_____Female
2. Age: ______
3. Date of birth (month)_____/(day)_______/(year)_______
4. Year in school: (if it is summer and you are enrolled for school in the fall, please mark the fall grade level):
____Freshman
____Sophomore
____Junior
____Senior
____Other
5. Ethnicity: Please Check One-
___ Hispanic or Latino
___ Not Hispanic or Latino
6. Racial Background: Please check all that apply:
___ American Indian or Alaska Native
___ Asian
___ Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander
___ Black or African-American
___ White or Caucasian
___ More than one race
___ Other (Please specify): _________________
7. Please check all that apply regarding the current living situation of your parents
___My parents are married and live together
___My parents live together as though they were married (cohabitating)
___My parents are married but don’t live together
___My parents are separated
___My parents are divorced
___One/both my parents are deceased (please specify who: ________________ )
___My mother is living with a new partner
___My father is living with a new partner
***If your parents are no longer living together, please indicate how old you were when they stopped living
together ________________________________________________________________
10. Who lives with you in your PRIMARY household? [Check all that apply]
_____mom
_____dad
_____stepmom
_____stepdad
_____mom’s romantic partner……….(circle one) married not married
_____dad’s romantic partner………..(circle one) married not married
_____brother/s…………..How many? ______ What are their ages? ____________
_____stepbrothers………How many? ______ What are their ages? ____________
_____half-brother/s………How many? ______ What are their ages? ____________
_____sister/s…………….How many? ______ What are their ages? ___________
_____stepsister/s………..How many? ______ What are their ages? ____________
_____half-sister/s………How many? ______ What are their ages? ____________
_____grandparent/s…….How many? ______
_____Others Who?______________________________________
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11. If you live in more than one household, who lives with you in your SECONDARY household:
[Check all that apply]
_____mom
_____dad
_____stepmom
_____stepdad
_____mom’s romantic partner……….(circle one) married not married
_____ dad’s romantic partner……….(circle one) married not married
_____brother/s……………How many? ______ What are their ages? ____________
_____stepbrothers……….How many? ______ What are their ages? ____________
_____sister/s……………...How many? ______ What are their ages? ___________
_____stepsister/s…………How many? ______ What are their ages? ____________
_____grandparent/s………How many? ______
_____Others Who?______________________________________
12. Are any of the children in your family (including you) adopted? (circle one) Yes No
12a. If yes, who? ____________________________________________
13. How long have you lived with your parent who is currently in the military? ___________
15. Is that parent …. [please check all that apply]
_____ currently deployed [If yes, where deployed?_______________________________]
_____ previously deployed [If yes, where previously deployed? _____________________]
_____still in the military but stationed in the US [If yes, where stationed?______________]
_____still in the military but living at home
16. If deployed currently or previously, in what ways do you communicate with your parent who is deployed?
[Check all that apply]
____Telephone
____E-mail
____Text message
____Web-cam
____Social networking sites (e.g., facebook)
____Snail mail (letter correspondence)
____Other (describe)____________________________
17. If deployed currently or previously, how often do/did you communicate with your parent who is/was deployed?
[Check all that apply]
____Never
____Once a month
____Once a week
____2-3 times a week
____Once a day
____Several times a day
____Other (describe)____________________________
18 From what sources do you seek out news or information about the wars/military activity?
[Check all that apply]
____TV news
____internet/websites
____Print newspapers or magazines
____Ask parent or other family members
____Other (describe)____________________________
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19. How often do you seek out news or information about the wars/military activity?
____Never
____Once a month
____Once a week
____2-3 times a week
____Once a day
____Several times a day
____Other (describe) ____________________________
20. How often do you worry about your parent who is in the military?
____Never
____Once a month
____Once a week
____2-3 times a week
____Once a day
____Several times a day
____Other (describe) ____________________________
If you worry, what are your 3 most common worries?
(a)___________________________________________________________________________
(b)___________________________________________________________________________
(c)___________________________________________________________________________
21. How often do you have positive thoughts about your parent [or person like your parent] who is in the military?
____Never
____Once a month
____Once a week
____2-3 times a week
____Once a day
____Several times a day
____Other (describe) ____________________________
If you have positive thoughts, what are your 3 most common positive thoughts?
(a)___________________________________________________________________________
(b)___________________________________________________________________________
(c)___________________________________________________________________________
22. How often do you worry about how other family members are affected by issues related to being a military family?
____Never
____Once a month
____Once a week
____2-3 times a week
____Once a day
____Several times a day
____Other (describe) ____________________________
If you worry, what are your 3 biggest worries?
(a)___________________________________________________________________________
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(b)___________________________________________________________________________
(c)___________________________________________________________________________
23. How often do you have positive thoughts about other family members [not the military member] related to being a
military family?
____Never
____Once a month
____Once a week
____2-3 times a week
____Once a day
____Several times a day
____Other (describe) ____________________________
If you have positive thoughts, what are your 3 most common positive thoughts?
(a)___________________________________________________________________________
(b)___________________________________________________________________________
(c)___________________________________________________________________________
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Helping Parents (YOUTH)
Over the past 30 days, to what extent did you help your mom by doing the following?
I helped by…
How Much?
None A little Some A lot
1. Giving money
2. Giving advice
3. Doing household chores
4. Doing errands
5. Assisting her on the computer
6. Assisting her with other technology, DVD, phone etc.
7. Providing babysitting
8. Talking about her problems
9. Watching out for her health or getting her to go to doctor
10. Getting her to stop smoking
11. Getting her to stop drinking
12. Getting her to pay attention to diet
13. Giving emotional support
14. Helping her worry less
15. Cooking for her
16. Translating from one language to another
17. Telling her how to act in certain situations
18. Helping with a business or legal document
19. Driving her around
20. Driving someone else around (e.g., younger sibling)
21. Helping sibling with homework or other activity
22. Other (please describe)_________________________
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Helping Parents – Deployment (YOUTH)
Some adolescents report that their family responsibilities change during their parent’s deployment. Now, we would like you to tell us: how much
you’ve helped your mom in the past 30 days, and then how much your parent’s deployment has changed the help you give.
How much have you helped in
the past 30 days?
How has the help changed during the deployment?
None A
Little
Some A Lot A Lot
Less
-3
Some-
what
Less
-2
A
Little
Less
-1
No
Change
0
A
Little
More
+1
Some
what
More
+2
A Lot
More
+3
1. Giving money
2. Giving advice
3. Doing household chores
4. Doing errands
5. Assisting her on the computer
6.
Assisting her with other technology,
DVD, phone etc.
7. Providing babysitting
8. Talking about her problems
9.
Watching out for her health or getting
her to go to doctor
10. Getting her to stop smoking
11. Getting her to stop drinking
12. Getting her to pay attention to diet
13. Giving emotional support
14. Helping her worry less
15. Cooking for her
16.
Translating from one language to
another
17.
Telling her how to act in certain
situations
18.
Helping with a business or legal
document
19.
Driving her around
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How much have you helped in
the past 30 days?
How has the help changed during the deployment?
None A
Little
Some A Lot A Lot
Less
-3
Some-
what
Less
-2
A
Little
Less
-1
No
Change
0
A
Little
More
+1
Some
what
More
+2
A Lot
More
+3
20.
Driving someone else around (e.g.,
younger sibling)
21.
Helping sibling with homework or other
activity
22.
Other (please describe)
__________________________
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Background and Family Characteristics – Parent
1. Gender: _____ Male
_____Female
2. Age: ______
3. Date of birth (month)_____/(day)_______/(year)_______
4. What country were you born in? ________________________________________________________
If other than U.S., when did you come to the U.S.? _____/_____ (month/year)
5. Ethnicity: Please Check One-
___ Hispanic or Latino
___ Not Hispanic or Latino
6. Racial Background: Please check all that apply:
___ American Indian or Alaska Native
___ Asian
___ Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander
___ Black or African-American
___ White or Caucasian
___ More than one race
___ Other (Please specify): _________________
7. What is your religious affiliation? ________________________________________________________
8. How often have you personally attended religious services over the past year? (Check one)
___ Never
___ Once
___ 2-3 times
___ About once a month
___ About once a week
___ More than once a week
9. Regardless of whether you actually attend religious services, please indicate to what extent you consider
yourself to be a religious person: (Check one)
___ Not at all religious
___ Somewhat religious
___ Moderately religious
___ Very religious
___ Extremely religious
___ Religion is the most important influence in my life
10. How many times have you moved to a different home in the past 10 years? _______times
11. How long have you lived at your current residence? _______years ______ months
12. Please estimate how many friends you have living within 1 mile of your home? __________
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13. Please estimate how many relatives you have living within 1 mile of your home? __________
13b. In what city do your parents/family of origin live? _______________________________________
13c. In what city do your in-laws live? ____________________________________________________
14. Are you currently employed? ! Yes, full-time ! Yes, part-time ! No, currently unemployed
14b. How do your current work hours compare to your desired work hours? (check all that apply)
___ Much fewer hours than I’d like
___ Somewhat fewer hours than I’d like
___ About the number of hours I’d like
___ Somewhat more hours than I’d like
___ Many more hours than I’d like
___ Not currently employed outside home
15. What type of work do you do? _______________________________________________________
15b. How well does your current job utilize your level of training/skill?
___ My job requires much less training/skill than I have
___ My job requires somewhat less training/skill than I have
___ My job requires about my level of training/skill
___ My job requires somewhat more training/skill than I have
___ My job requires much more training/skill than I have
___ Not currently employed outside home
16. Please estimate your yearly gross income (not including spouse’s income): $____________________
17. What was your highest grade of schooling/degree obtained?
___did not finish high school
___ high school degree
___GED
___some college
___went to a trade school/certificate program
___graduated college (received an undergraduate degree)
___got a degree beyond college (masters, Ph.D. etc)
___Other (describe)____________________________
17b. What grade of schooling/degree do/did you wish to obtain?
___ some high school
___ high school degree
___ GED
___some college
___trade school/certificate
___some college
___ college - undergraduate degree
___degree beyond college (masters, Ph.D. etc)
___Other (describe)____________________________
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17c. What is the highest grade in school your husband completed?
___did not finish high school
___graduated high school
___got a GED
___some college
___went to a trade school/certificate program
___graduated college (received an undergraduate degree)
___got a degree beyond college (masters, Ph.D. etc)
___Other (describe)____________________________
18. Are you currently in school? ! Yes ! No
19a. How many people do you live with on a regular or semi-regular basis? _______
19b. Please list those people in terms of relationship to you and age (approximate if you do not know
the exact age):
For example: sister, age 36; dad, age 67, daughter's boyfriend, age 26
Relationship to You
____________________ _
____________________ _
____________________ _
____________________ _
____________________ _
____________________
____________________
____________________
Age
_________
_________
_________
_________
_________
_________
_________
_________
Biologically
Related to You?
Y/N
Y/N
Y/N
Y/N
Y/N
Y/N
Y/N
Y/N
Biologically
Related to Child
in Study?
Y/N
Y/N
Y/N
Y/N
Y/N
Y/N
Y/N
Y/N
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Your Family Member in the Military
20. Is your spouse …. [please check all that apply]
_____ currently deployed [If yes, where deployed? ____________________________________]
_____ previously deployed [If yes, where previously deployed? __________________________]
_____still in the military but stationed in the US [If yes, where stationed? ___________________]
_____still in the military but living at home
_____no longer in the military
22. If deployed currently or previously, in what ways do you [did you] communicate with your spouse during the
deployment(s)?
[Check all that apply]
____Telephone
____E-mail
____Text message
____Web-cam
____Social networking sites (e.g., facebook)
____Snail mail (letter correspondence)
____Other (describe)____________________________
23. How often do you [did you] communicate with your spouse?
____Never
____Once a month
____Once a week
____2-3 times a week
____Once a day
____Several times a day
____Other (describe) ____________________________
24. How often do you seek out news or information about the wars/military activity?
____Never
____Once a month
____Once a week
____2-3 times a week
____Once a day
____Several times a day
____Other (describe) ____________________________
25. From what sources do you seek out news or information about the wars/military activity?
[Check all that apply]
____TV news
____internet/websites
____Print newspapers or magazines
____Ask deployed family member or other family members
____Other (describe)____________________________
26. How often do you worry about your spouse?
____Never
____Once a month
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____Once a week
____2-3 times a week
____Once a day
____Several times a day
____Other (describe) ____________________________
If you worry, what are your 3 most common worries?
(a)___________________________________________________________________________
(b)___________________________________________________________________________
(c)___________________________________________________________________________
27. How often do you have positive thoughts about your spouse’s involvement in the military?
____Never
____Once a month
____Once a week
____2-3 times a week
____Once a day
____Several times a day
____Other (describe) ____________________________
If you have positive thoughts, what are your 3 most common positive thoughts?
(a)___________________________________________________________________________
(b)___________________________________________________________________________
(c)___________________________________________________________________________
28. How often do you worry about how other family members are affected by issues related to being a military
family?
____Never
____Once a month
____Once a week
____2-3 times a week
____Once a day
____Several times a day
____Other (describe) ____________________________
If you worry, what are your 3 biggest worries?
(a)___________________________________________________________________________
(b)___________________________________________________________________________
(c)___________________________________________________________________________
29. How often do you have positive thoughts about other family members [not the military member]
related to being a military family?
____Never
____Once a month
____Once a week
____2-3 times a week
____Once a day
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____Several times a day
____Other (describe) ____________________________
If you have positive thoughts, what are your 3 most common positive thoughts?
(a)___________________________________________________________________________
(b)___________________________________________________________________________
(c)___________________________________________________________________________
Family Ties to the Military
30. Who else in your family has served or is serving in the U.S. Military? (Check all that apply)
___ grandparent(s)…..Which grandparent(s)? ___________________
___ parent(s)…………Which parent(s)?___________________________
___ brother(s).………..How many? ______ What are their ages? ____________
___ sister(s)…………..How many? ______ What are their ages? ____________
___ son(s)…………….How many? ______ What are their ages? ____________
___ daughter(s)……...How many? ______ What are their ages? ____________
___ nephew(s)……….How many? ______ What are their ages? ____________
___ niece(s)…………..How many? ______ What are their ages? ____________
___ parent(s)-in-law…Which parent(s)-in-law?___________________________
___ brother(s)-in-law..How many? ______ What are their ages? ____________
___ sister(s)-in-law….How many? ______ What are their ages? ____________
___ others _______________________________________________________
31. Who of the above, if any, is currently serving? _____________________________________
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MILITARY DYAD CODING MANUAL
(10.21.14)
You will be observing brief interactions between mothers and their teenage children in military
families. Some of these discussions are about current areas of conflict or disagreement, and others are
about meaningful experiences related to the father’s military service. As you watch these discussions,
you will provide ratings of both the mothers’ and the teens’ behavior towards one another as well as your
general impressions of how the family is organized and operates.
The First Viewing: Coding Behaviors in Two-Minute Segments
When you first watch a family’s discussion recording, you should note the time at which the
experimenter leaves the room and the dyad begins discussing the topic. Then, you will stop the recording
at two-minute intervals and provide ratings on the “General Behavioral Codes” and “Conversation Task
Codes” described on pages 2 through 8. Because discussions may vary somewhat in length, you may
have more recording remaining after the fifth segment or the fifth segment may be less than two minutes
long. Do not code behavior beyond ten minutes in the fifth segment box. Use the segment 5 box to code
whatever portion of the discussion occurs between 8-10 minutes after the discussion began. If a family
ended their discussion prior to the fifth segment (rare, but does occur), please mark “ND” for “no data” in
all segment 5 boxes.
For each of these codes (unless otherwise noted), you will rate the youth’s behavior toward the
mother and the mother’s behavior toward the youth separately. You will provide ratings on a 0-3 scale.
These ratings are designed to be a measure of the impact of the behavior, not merely its frequency or
intensity. Some behaviors (like being mocked) are so noxious to the recipient that only one minor
occurrence of them will be very impactful; other behaviors may require more frequent occurrences or
intensities to be impactful. To determine the impact of a behavior, you will need to empathize with the
recipient of a behavior and observe his or her cues following the behavior’s occurrence (e.g., did his/her
demeanor change?).
0 (not at all) indicates that the behavior did not occur during the current two-minute discussion
segment. You must code zero rather than leaving a box blank!
1 (a little) indicates that there was some indication of that behavior during the segment, such
that the receiver of the behavior would have noted it but it may not have impacted him/her
strongly.
2 (moderate amount) indicates that the behavior was impactful during the segment, but did not
provide the primary flavor for the recipient’s experience of the discussion.
3 (a lot) indicates that the behavior was so impactful for the recipient that it likely stood out as
one of the primary messages being sent.
Codes are not mutually exclusive! You may take a single behavior into account when rating several
different codes (e.g., lecturing #22 is often disapproval of behavior #2 and may be accompanied by
dismissive gestures #10)
The Second Viewing: Global Ratings
Once you have finished rating the General Behavioral and Conversation Task codes for all five two-
minute segments, watch the entire discussion again. You may pause the video to adjust your initial
ratings, but try to watch the entire discussion with minimal breaks. Then, complete the global discussion
ratings described on pages 9–10. Note that for affect ratings, you will use a 0-4 scale to assess how each
participant was feeling during the discussion.
Handling Tough Decisions while Coding
• If you aren’t sure about an entire code (e.g., when it does/doesn’t apply generally) – contact Aubrey
right away for clarification.
• If you aren’t sure about how to code a specific behavior, write a detailed description of the behavior or
a verbatim quote. Highlight/flag the segment where the behavior occurred so you can find it later.
Bring this example to the weekly coding meeting for discussion.
• If you notice a behavior that seems significant/impactful that is not described in the system, make a
detailed note and bring it to the weekly coding meeting for discussion.
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FIRST-VIEWING CODES
GENERAL BEHAVIORAL CODES
These codes are designed to characterize common aspects of family communication – we
expect at least some of these codes to be apparent in the majority of discussions, although
there will be variability among families. Codes are divided into verbal and nonverbal categories.
Verbal Behaviors
1) Disagree with idea or disapprove of behavior in neutral tone.
This code is considered the best possible response to the problem discussion task – the
problematic idea or behavior is identified in an affectively neutral and minimally
judgmental way. Disagreement may also be implied, such as when offering a rationale for
change of behavior (related to conflict resolution categories #20-25 on pages 6-7).
Examples:
• Verbal statement that idea/behavior is wrong/not good,
• Giving reasons why idea will not work,
• Giving alternative that does not build on the other’s ideas
• “We’re worried that you spend too much time with your friends and not enough
time on your schoolwork.” (implied disagreement with behavior pattern)
2) Criticize or disregard a single idea or behavior.
As contrasted with disagreement (#1), this category entails a more overt disapproval of
an idea or behavior. The criticism or disapproval should be communicated more through
words than tone, although there can be some negative affect. The criticism or disapproval
should be circumscribed to a specific behavior or idea but not applied to the person
generally (which would be #3 below). Examples:
• “That is not the way it happened” (stated with negative affect)
• “That’s a ridiculous idea” (without implying that person is stupid/ridiculous)
• Honing in on one habit: “You never put your clothes away.” “But I do vacuum”
“But your clothes are a real problem and the clutter is driving me crazy.”
3) Criticism, disdain, hostility towards the other’s person generally.
Direct or implied rejection, antagonism or resentment of the person, or disapproval that
communicates worthlessness of the person as a whole, his/her abilities, personality, or
characteristics. The implication is that the person is stupid, ridiculous, or out of his/her
mind. Tone communicates frustration and irritation, and perhaps a sense of contempt or
threat (contrast with neutrally stated consequence that sets limits for behavior). Could
also include sarcasm and mocking of the person, as well as biting humor. Examples:
• “What were you thinking?”
• “You have to be kidding.” (hostile/mean/demeaning tone)
• “If you do that again, you can say goodbye to [privilege]”
• “ I can’t believe your mom let you get away with that” (criticism of mom but not
necessarily criticism of the child) [criticism through a 3
rd
person]
• “You are just like your dad” (if meant as criticism – not compliment – towards dad
and child) [negative comparison to a 3
rd
person]
• “That means you’re what, a coward?”
• “You’re dirty.” (In conversation about keeping space clean)
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4) Agreement with or approval of idea in neutral tone.
Verbal statement that idea or behavior is acceptable, or building on other’s idea (thus
demonstrating approval, but not enthusiasm). A response that furthers the conversation
on the partner’s point either by allowing the partner to elaborate, by encouraging with an
affirmation. Examples:
• “Ok”
• “I guess so”
• “That might work if we…”
• Expression of willingness to entertain an idea, including one’s own contribution to
a problem (i.e., a non-defensive response)
5) Support or approval of partner.
Use of positive affect (support, enthusiasm, excitement) to describe the other person or
his/her idea(s) or behavior. May include stating that idea is good, giving reasons for
support of idea, or building enthusiastically on the idea. Generalized agreement with the
other’s thoughts, ideas that if it is coupled with a high level of positive affect. Examples:
• “That’s a really good idea!”
• Appropriate use of humor
• “You are a really good kid.” “I think you’re a fun mom.”
• “It’s nice that it’s safe here and we can stay out past 10.” “Yeah, that has been a
really good thing for you!”
• “You would do really well in career X because…”
6) Express Appreciation/Compliment
The actor compliments the partner or expresses appreciation for his/her behavior,
attitude, or ideas. Note that this comment is more specific than expressions of general
approval, which would still be coded under #6.
• “You really have been a huge help with this move.”
• “ I think it’s cool how the other moms look up to you.”
• “You and your sister are better at socializing in a new group than I ever was.”
• “You do a good job of balancing mom and dad duties when dad is gone.”
• Verbal communication of affection – “I love you.” “You rock!” “You’re adorable.”
“You’re funny!”
• “You do well in school.”
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Nonverbal Behaviors
7) Engagement
The extent to which the individual is actively participating in the discussion – are they
doing the task we assigned them? Individuals need not necessarily be speaking to be
involved and engaged. Examples of nonverbal expressions:
• Maintaining eye contact when the other is speaking
• Leaning toward the other (to communicate interest)
8) Withdrawal
Can be a covert or overt nonverbal attempt to remove oneself from the conversation. This
should only be coded if the actor appears to be trying to escape out of fear or feeling
overwhelmed. Examples:
• Shrugging
• Intentionally staying quiet
• Looking away, straight ahead, or down
• Turning away, positioning self away from other
• Changing the topic (if you believe it is motivated by avoidance)
• Monosyllabic responses to longer questions: “ Did you feel sad seeing Dad
leave?” “No.”
9) Dismissiveness/Invalidation
Conveys disapproval or hostility through actions. The message communicated is that the
recipient’s view or affect is inappropriate, irrational, or unacceptable. Alternatively, the
actor may ignore, block out, or refuse to recognize the other’s statements/ideas. He/she
may block the other from getting a word in. This code applies to nonverbal behavior;
displeasure expressed only verbally should not be coded as #1-3 and not dismissiveness.
Examples:
• Shaking head no (with neutral, negative, or sarcastic expression)
• Pointing at the partner or counting negative things on fingers
• Scowling or smirking at other person
• Threatening posture or movement
• Mocking mimicry of other’s gestures
• Sarcastic or demeaning tone of voice
• Ignoring other’s statement & continuing one’s own argument
• Talking over the other person [in a way that shuts out or shuts down the other]
• Immediate disagreement or rebuttal of an argument
• “Whenever you’re late you never text me.” “So?”
10) Affection
Indicating that the other is likeable nonverbally. Examples:
• Sharing a laugh
• Making sure another’s contribution is heard (even if one doesn’t agree with the
expressed opinion)
• Smiling at the other person
• Reaching out and touching the other person
• Change of posture (e.g., leaning in) if intended to communicate warmth/support
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CONVERSATION TASK CODES
The conversation task codes relate to goals that family members try to accomplish in their
communication. Generally, these tasks are (1) regulating interpersonal intimacy/closeness, (2)
resolving conflict, and (3) making meaning/sense of their shared situation.
Task: Regulate Intimacy
11) Self-Disclose
The actor reveals information that has the potential to increase closeness or intimacy
within the dyad. This may include expressing vulnerable thoughts or emotions, or
providing sensitive information. Self-disclosure goes beyond general information sharing
in its focus on affect/emotion and in its function (to increase intimacy). Examples:
• “Sometimes I wonder what would happen to us if I lost my job.”
• “I felt scared when he offered me a drink.”
• “I think I messed up, and it makes me feel crummy.”
• “I feel like I don’t have much of a relationship with Dad because he’s never
around”
12) Elicit Other-Disclosure
The actor attempts to evoke information from the partner that has the potential to
increase relational closeness or intimacy. This may include asking questions about
vulnerable thoughts or emotions or about the partner’s reflections on the relationship.
This involves more than simply asking “what else?” or “can you think of anything else
you want to say?” Examples:
• “How did you feel when you found out daddy was getting deployed again?”
• “Do you think I’m too hard on you about your grades? Does it upset you?”
• “Was it easier meeting new people when you were younger?”
13) Overdisclose (Parent only)
The parent reveals sensitive or personal information that the youth should not be privy to
because he/she has no way to act upon that information. For example, the parent may
describe emotions in a way that is so intense that the youth feels burdened or helpless.
Or, a parent may disclose information about someone else that may influence the
youth’s relationship with that person. Alternatively, the parent may disclose information
that is beyond the youth’s developmental level. Examples:
• Discussion of the parent’s sexual relationship(s)
• Discussion of family finances [given youth’s developmental stage (i.e., ability to
understand and attend to $, this may be a low-level overdisclosure]
• “I often think that things would be better if I were gone.”
• “Your father doesn’t think things through before he does them.”
14) Attunement
The actor senses and responds to the listener’s needs or requests in a way that suggests
he/she is “in sync” with the other person in the moment. This might include checking
his/her perceptions, determining what the partner would like the actor to do, or reading
the partner’s cues. This code is applied only to behavior in the discussion; general
warmth or alliance is coded globally later. Example:
• “You look really upset about this. What can I do to help?”
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15) Empathy
The actor’s statement connects him/herself with the partner, conveying understanding of
the partner because he/she has felt, thought, or experienced similar things. Examples:
• “This is a difficult time for all of us. I often feel confused and stressed too.”
• “I remember when my friends excluded me; that can really hurt.”
• “I’ve been angry just like that.”
• “At this age, I would have rather spent time with friends too.”
• “I can understand how you’re feeling about your Dad, because I barely saw mine
too when I was your age.”
• “The moms on this base can be really cliquey, too. I have had a hard time finding
friends just as you have at school.”
16) Voice Concern
The actor communicates that he or she is genuinely concerned about the partner’s
lifestyle/habits/development/well-being. Examples:
• “Sometimes I think you don’t try to get to know the other moms since you know
we’ll be leaving.”
• “I have been worried about the way you get along with your friends.”
• “You’re growing up too fast – don’t worry so much about those things.”
• “If you don’t learn to try harder in school, how are you going to get a job?”
17) Assist with Adaptive Emotion Regulation
The actor appears to be attempting to modulate the partner’s emotional responses, or
his/her affective display in a healthy way. Examples:
• Reframing – “Dealing with this has made you more mature.”
• Providing healthy perspective – “Someday you will laugh at how worried you
were about this”
• Trying to calm the partner by using different tone of voice, rate or volume of
speech, facial expressions, or gestures
• Softening the blow- “You’re a good boy in school, but you have to be better at
cleaning here at home.”
• You’ve been better lately, but when you don’t text me it’s frustrating.”
• Do you really think this was the worst year of our lives? Wasn’t the deployment
worse 3 years ago than the move this year?
18) Induce Guilt
The actor attempts to make the partner feel guilty for his/her contributions to the family
problems or concerns. This can take the form of a parent revealing that she is too
burdened already to be concerned with the youth’s behavior or other family stressors
(note: the youth could conceivably do this as well). If the behavior also serves to
minimize or ignore the concerns of the partner, dismissiveness (#10) should also be
coded. The affective tone is important, as actors may communicate their message
without evoking guilt. Examples:
• “I have so many things on my plate - I can’t worry about your homework too.”
• “With all my health issues, this is really the last thing I need right now!”
• “I would have more friends if you would let me go out and do things!”
• “You didn’t take out the trash so your dad had to do it. Is that fair?”
• “You do it more than I do.”
• “You should be able to read my mood and try not to make things worse.”
• “You always compliment [siblings] when they do their chores but not me!”
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Task: Resolve Conflict
19) Request Change
The actor describes a change he or she would like the other to make, or describes a
desired change in which the other would play a role.
• “It would mean a lot to me if you helped your brother with his homework”
• “Please don’t yell at us to clean our rooms. Just ask.”
• “I wish you would do your dishes without me asking.”
• “You need to start doing your chores on time and when I ask you.”
20) Provide explanation or rationale for one’s desire for behavior change.
Explaining reasons for disagreeing or disapproving of a behavior. May include reference
to standards as preparing the other for a future managing similar challenges. Emphasis
is communicating to the other that changing the behavior may have benefits. However,
extensive explanatory monologues may be coded as a lecture (#22). Examples:
• “We want you to do your chores without being reminded, because when you get
a job, your boss won’t be reminding you of what you need to do.”
• “If you would keep your things more organized, you probably wouldn’t be so
stressed when you have to find something.”
• Providing rationale in defense of current behavior (e.g., child defends her
homework habits to a parent who is criticizing them)
• Hypotheticals: “Can you imagine how nice it would be if you finished your
homework on time, and I didn’t have to bother you about it?”
• “Why don’t you clean your room?” “Sometimes I’m just too tired”
• “Why didn’t you text me?” “It was just 5 minutes.” (possibly dismissive too)
21) Lecture
As contrasted with explanation (#21), this entails providing a more lengthy rationale in a
less sympathetic manner. Reasons are given more to enhance one’s own argument
(i.e., to demonstrate that one’s position is correct) than to establish understanding with
the other person. An overly lengthy explanation should be considered a lecture. A string
of explanations (#20) without letting child express their opinions, or only briefly letting
child express opinions.
22) “Lay down the law”
As contrasted with lecturing (#22), “laying down the law” may entail giving some
rationale for the desired behavioral change, however, the primary purpose is to state a
set of demands for future behavior. Demands are made without a sympathetic tone and
speech does not invite discussion, only compliance. Examples:
• “Don’t talk back to me! I’m the parent – that’s just how it is.”
23) Authoritative Limit-Setting (Parent Only)
The parent clearly communicates expectations for the youth’s current or future behavior
without being coercive or expressing hostile affect. The intent is to clarify for the youth
the boundary between appropriate and inappropriate behavior in some domain. A low-
level of this code could include an attempt by a parent that is less than successful (e.g.,
by being too vague [“do better at X”], going on too long [perhaps evolving into a lecture
#22], or becoming too affectively-charged [perhaps laying down the law #23]).
Examples:
• “I won’t allow you to go to the dance if you can’t get your math grade above a C.”
• “Your room needs to be cleaned at least once a week.”
• “I know your friends are dating, but we are not allowing that until you are 16.”
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24) Accepting Responsibility
The individual assumes the blame or accountability for his/her part of a problem or of a
solution. Examples:
• “I do pick on my sister a lot; I think I start it at least as often as she does.”
• “I’m partly to blame; I haven’t really been keeping track of how often your chores
are done.”
• “You don’t need to worry about taking her to her lessons, I can drop her off.”
• “I could do a better job of doing the dishes.”
• “I need to start making sure you and [sibling] are on top of your schoolwork.”
Task: Meaning-Making (Military) – the family’s fit within military culture
25) Military As Explanation
The actor relates the current situation or discussion topic to the family’s link to the
military. This might include:
• The military experience putting things in perspective (e.g., this challenge isn’t as
bad as what we have experienced before)
• The demands of military service as justification for a behavior change (e.g., the
youth is asked to spend more time at home due to a parent’s deployment)
• Military connection explains why a challenge exists (e.g., the parents might fight
less if the service member wasn’t required to work such long and irregular hours)
26) Military Stressful/Difficult
The actor conveys the message that military experience is challenging, difficult, or
stressful for him/herself, other family members, or the family as a whole. This should be
coded regardless of whether the actor is expressing generally positive or generally
negative thoughts/emotions about the military.
27) Undermine/Exclude Service Member
The individual indicates that the service member’s thoughts/preferences are not binding
or relevant for him/herself, other family members, or the family as a whole. This includes
noting that the service member’s preferences are irrelevant due to his absence(s). Or, the
individual may criticize or disapprove of the service member.
• “Your dad’s never there to do anything.”
• “What does he [dad] care? It’s not like your schedule affects him much.”
28) Incorporate Service Member
The service member’s thoughts or preferences are discussed, plans are made to
discuss issues with him at a later time, or he appears to factor into the family’s meaning-
making about the military experience. Note: For the service member to be incorporated,
he must be discussed as a person and not merely a presence.
• “I think it’s all right if you go to the dance, but we’ll have to check with your dad.”
• “Dad doesn’t want me to switch schools.”
• “Dad really enjoys what he does, and it makes a lot of this worth it.”
• “The three of us are going to sit down and talk about this.”
29) Cope Together
Challenges of military life are seen as something to be mastered mutually or
cooperatively. Parent and youth view military stresses as things that the family will cope
with communally, rather than individually.
• "It sucks that no one understands what we’re going through.”
• “Well, it’s just another move – we’ll get everything sorted out. We always do.”
137
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SECOND-VIEWING CODES
These codes are global ratings (i.e., a single rating per actor for the entire discussion). Many
describe broader, overarching patterns of the relationship that may be evident throughout the
discussion but may not be codeable in individual behaviors or discussion segments. Some
codes are included here because they are expected to be rare in the study – but still interesting!
1) Leads Discussion
Extent to which both parties take role of initiating and maintaining conversation,
changing the subject, framing the discussion. A zero score would mean that parent and
child divide this task equally.
2) Overall Dyadic Alliance
Extent to which the mother and child are connected or allied and or the extent of
mutuality/cohesion in the dyad. It is not equivalent to agreeing on everything, but among
dyads with high alliance scores, disagreements do not appear to disrupt the parent-child
bond. The attunement code (interval code #15) may provide evidence of alliance, but
rate the overall sense of cohesion whether overtly expressed in the discussion or not.
3) Parent Knowledge (Parent only)
Extent to which the parent seems well-informed about the youth’s day-to-day life. For
example, a well-informed parent might know: the youth’s daily/weekly schedule, names
of friends and teachers, upcoming important events, etc. You may not have specific
evidence of this in the discussion, but rate your impression of the parent’s style.
4) Punitiveness (Parent only)
The parent seems overly harsh and reactive toward the youth’s behavior. The
punishment or censure is not equal to the youth’s infraction. You may not have specific
evidence of this in the discussion, but rate your impression of the parent’s style.
Examples:
• “I can’t believe you failed your test! You won’t be driving for the next month!”
• “What were you thinking?! You are never allowed to see her again!”
• “Watch your mouth! Do you really want to be grounded for the semester?”
5) Permissiveness (Parent only)
The parent does not monitor the youth’s behaviors or seek any information about the
youth’s plans. The parent assents to all of the youth’s plans. You may not have specific
evidence of this in the discussion, but rate your impression of the parent’s style.
• Youth: “So, do you think I can go to the party on Wednesday night?” Parent:
“Sure, why not. It’s up to you.”
6) Overprotectiveness/Overcontrol (Parent only)
The parent communicates an inflated perception of danger for a situation, or suggests
that the youth be on the alert or overly concerned about a situation or person.
Alternatively, the parent may detect threat in seemingly innocuous situations. OR a
parent may attempt to manage the youth’s behavior or routine in a way that seems
unreasonable for the youth’s developmental level (overcontrol). Overprotectiveness/
Overcontrol should not be coded if a reasonable parent might make similar attributions
or suggestions. Examples:
• “It’s too cold outside for you to go out with your friends. You’ll get sick and will
miss school and then you’ll be even further behind.”
• Requiring a very early bedtime for an older adolescent
• Severely restricting activities with friends/beyond the home
138
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7) Challenging Authority (Youth only)
The youth questions or defies the parent’s authority to make decisions or set
rules/boundaries. Examples:
• “You guys can give [younger sibling] whatever rules you want, but that doesn’t
mean I have to follow them.”
• “I’ll start keeping my room clean when you start keeping the rest of the house
clean.” (probably also inducing guilt #19)
8) Parentification (Youth only)
The youth attempts to or successfully takes on the emotional or practical responsibilities
of a parent or co-parent, particularly in caring for the at-home parent or providing
leadership within the family. Or the youth provides adult-like emotional support to the
parent that appears to reflect equality in their roles. Examples:
• “Don’t worry about it, Mom. I’ll handle the car repair.”
• “I think we need to do something about my little sister’s grades. Maybe we
should talk to her teacher.”
• “You shouldn’t talk to your parents. They just use you for your money.”
9) Invoke Service Member Authority
The individual serves as a mouthpiece for the service member, invoking his authority
rather than merely commenting on his thoughts/preferences.
10) Compare to Other Military Families
Actor describes ways in which the family (or youth/parent) is similar or dissimilar to other
military families (youth/parents) in their experience of military family life (e.g., moving
more or less, having more family available)
11) Compare to Civilian Families
Actor describes ways in which the family (or youth/parent) is similar or dissimilar to
civilian families (e.g., growing up in the same neighborhood, contact with more cultures).
• “It’s weird to think about having the same friend group for my whole life like a lot
of people at my school do. But I’m just as close to Ann, if not closer.”
12) Military Positive
The actor conveys positive emotion or positive attributions about the military as an
institution or the family’s experience of the military. This includes all levels of the military
(e.g., unit, command structure, military culture/norms). This does not include positive
feelings/attributions directed at the service member as a person (e.g., being thoughtful)
unless his behavior is explicitly linked to his military service (e.g., high sense of duty, if
noted that the military instilled this in him).
13) Military Negative
The actor conveys negative emotion or negative attributions about the military as an
institution or the family’s experience of the military. This includes all levels of the military
(e.g., unit, command structure, military culture/norms). This does not include negative
feelings/attributions directed at the service member as a person (e.g., being
disorganized) unless his behavior is explicitly linked to his military service (e.g.,
excessive drinking with “the boys” if linked to military cultural norms).
Affective States
Rather self-explanatory. Rate your perception of the extent to which each family member felt
the listed emotions over the course of the discussion. Note that these ratings are made on a
different, 0-4 scale.
139
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0= not at all
Family ID
1= a little
Coder ID
2= moderate amount
Discussion 1 /2
3= a lot
(office use) C / M
Beginning Time:
Code
segment 1 segment 2 segment 3 segment 4 segment 5
M ->
Y
Y ->
M
M ->
Y
Y ->
M
M -> Y
Y ->
M
M ->
Y
Y -> M
M ->
Y
Y ->
M
General Behavioral Codes
Verbal Behaviors
1. Disagree/disapprove-neutral tone
2. Criticism/disregard-single idea/behavior
3. Criticism/disdain/hostility to person
4. Agree/approve-neutral tone
5. Support/approve of partner
6. Express appreciation/compliment
Non-verbal Behaviors
7. Engagement
8. Withdrawal
9. Dismissiveness/Invalidation
10. Affection
Conversation Task Codes
Regulate Intimacy/Affect
11. Self-Disclose
12. Elicit Other Disclose
13. Overdisclose
14. Attunement
15. Empathy
16. Voice Concern
17. Assist w/ Adaptive Emotion Regulation
18. Induce Guilt
Resolve Conflict
19. Request Change
20. Provide explanation/rationale
21. Lecture
22. Lay down the law
23. Authoritative Limit-Setting
24. Accept responsibility
Make Meaning (Military)
25. Military as Explanation
26. Military Stressful/Difficult
27. Undermine/Exclude Service Member
28. Incorporate Service Member
29. Cope Together
140
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Second-Viewing Codes (One Rating Per
Discussion)
1) Who Leads Discussion -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3
parent
youth
2) Overall Dyadic Alliance 0 1 2 3 4
no alliance/
connection
moderately allied/
connected
very allied/
connected
M Y
Rating Scale
3) Parent Knowledge
4) Punitiveness
0 Not at All
5) Permissiveness
1 A Little
6) Overprotectiveness
2 Moderate Amount
7) Challenging Authority
3 A Lot
8) Parentification
9) Invoke Service Member Authority
10) Compare to Other Military Families
11) Compare to Civilian Families
12) Military Positive
13) Military Negative
Affect Ratings
What were the family members feeling during the discussion?
M Y
calm
angry
hopeful
frustrated
Affect Rating Scale
happy
0 None
anxious
1 A Little
positively surprised
2 Some
irritated or annoyed
3 Moderate Amount
taken seriously by others
4 A Lot
embarrassed
ignored/not important
upset
tense
relieved
afraid/fearful
disappointed
Abstract (if available)
Abstract
Active duty military service exerts particular demands upon family members of military personnel to adapt to transitions within and outside the family: uncertainty about the occurrence and timing of separations
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Asset Metadata
Creator
Rodriguez, Aubrey J.
(author)
Core Title
Parental military service and adolescent mental and behavioral health: the role of adolescent-civilian parent interactions
School
College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
Degree
Doctor of Philosophy
Degree Program
Psychology
Publication Date
07/05/2016
Defense Date
03/30/2016
Publisher
University of Southern California
(original),
University of Southern California. Libraries
(digital)
Tag
adolescent caregiving,behavioral observation,deployment,emotional expression,military child,military family,OAI-PMH Harvest,parent absence,parent-child communication,parentification
Format
application/pdf
(imt)
Language
English
Contributor
Electronically uploaded by the author
(provenance)
Advisor
Margolin, Gayla (
committee chair
), Cederbaum, Julie A. (
committee member
), Farver, Jo Ann (
committee member
), Gatz, Margaret (
committee member
), Lopez, Steven R. (
committee member
)
Creator Email
aubreyro@usc.edu,aubrod29@yahoo.com
Permanent Link (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c40-261364
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UC11281399
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etd-RodriguezA-4506.pdf (filename),usctheses-c40-261364 (legacy record id)
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261364
Document Type
Dissertation
Format
application/pdf (imt)
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Rodriguez, Aubrey J.
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(contributing entity),
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Tags
adolescent caregiving
behavioral observation
deployment
emotional expression
military child
military family
parent absence
parent-child communication
parentification