I Feel Good at Home and With Myself: How Does Companionship Within the Family Affect Adolescents’ Well-Being?

Research has widely underscored that the quality of the parent-child relationship affects the success with which young people negotiate the major tasks of adolescence, the extent to which they become involved in risk behaviors, and their ability to establish close relationships. Literature has also increasingly shown the effects played by parents’ marital relationship on the development of their adolescent children. Starting from a view of family as a social organization, the purpose of this study was to investigate the kind of relations existing between dyadic family and both adolescents’ individual and family well-being. Participants were 118 family triads (father, mother, son/daughter) with an adolescent child, for a total of 354 people. Findings showed that marital relationship companionship was not significantly related to adolescents’ well-being, whereas parentchild relationship was. Moreover, individual adolescents’ well-being was related to both fatherchild and mother-child companionship whereas adolescents’ family well-being was only related to father-child companionship.