Adolescent friendships and adult well-being

In a recent issue of Child Development, Allen, Costello, Kansky, and Loeb (2021) published “When Friendships Surpass Parental Relationships as Predictors of Long-term Outcomes: Adolescent relationship qualities and adult psychosocial functioning.” I was drawn to this article because parents are much more often asked about teen behavior than friends are. Here’s the abstract:

Perceptions of adolescent–parent and adolescent–peer relationship qualities, and adolescents’ attachment states of mind were examined as predictors of adult social and romantic relationship quality, depressive symptoms, and work performance. Adolescents (86 male, 98 female; 58% White, 29% African American, 8% mixed race/ethnicity, 5% other groups) were followed from age 13 to 24 via observational, self-, parent-, and close friend-reports. Adolescent close friendship quality was a significantly better predictor of adult peer and romantic outcomes, work performance, and depressive symptoms than parental reports of the parent–teen relationship; attachment security was also a strong predictor of numerous outcomes. Results are interpreted as reflecting the difficulty for parents judging parent–teen relationship quality and as reflecting the growing importance of close friendships during this period.

I like the longitudinal nature of the study as well as the three sources of reports – parents, self, and close friends. The finding that close friendship quality is a better predictor than attachment security may reflect limitations in assessing attachment security, but it nonetheless suggests that friendship quality be seen as an important factor in assessing adolescents. Another obvious limitation of the study is that it contains participants who had a close friend willing to provide reports to the researchers. In any case, teen friendships deserve more attention.