Relationships That Protect: Teenage Parents’ Supportive Relationships, Children’s Externalizing and Internalizing Behavior Problems, and the Indirect Role of Harsh Parenting

Abstract

Prior to the birth of their first child, the majority of teenage mothers and their children’s biological fathers have a strong desire to raise a family together and be involved parents (Mollborn & Jacobs, 2015). Supportive couple and coparenting relationships are often overlooked as a strength or asset of teenage-headed families, which may help to mitigate common challenges for their children, including externalizing and internalizing symptoms. Yet, little is known about trajectories of teenage parents’ supportive relationships and how they link to the development of their children’s externalizing and internalizing behavior problems. To answer these questions, five waves of Fragile Families and Child Well-being Study data were extracted for a subsample of teenage-headed families (N=773). Parallel process latent growth curve models tested whether growth factors of supportive couple and coparenting relationship trajectories linked to starting levels or rates of change in children’s externalizing and internalizing challenges, or whether effects were indirectly channeled through lower levels of maternal harsh parenting. Results suggest that higher starting levels of couple supportiveness at birth predicted lower starting levels of children’s externalizing symptoms at age three and slower declines in symptoms across time. Some of these associations were partially transmitted through attenuated levels of maternal harsh parenting behaviors. For coparenting relationships, higher levels of support one year after birth predicted lower starting levels of children’s externalizing symptoms at age three and slower rates of change in symptoms across time. For children’s internalizing challenges, higher levels of couple supportiveness at birth predicted lower starting levels of internalizing symptoms at age three and slower rates of change in symptoms across time. Taken together, findings suggest that initial levels of teenage parents’ supportive relationships may buffer children from developing more severe externalizing or internalizing trajectories, in part, by reducing levels maternal harsh parenting behaviors. Implications of these findings on policies and programs serving teenage-headed families are discussed.