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Updated: Aug 14, 2026

Assessing the Coherence of Parents' Short Narratives Regarding their Child Using the Five-Minute Speech Sample Procedure
Published on: September 19, 2019
Perceptions of the parent-adolescent relationship: a longitudinal investigation
Matt McGue1, Irene Elkins, Brent Walden
1Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA. mcgue001@umn.edu
Abstract:
A self-report measure of conflict and aspects of warmth in the parent-child relationship was completed by 1,330 11-year-old twins, 1,176 of whom completed the inventory again 3 years later. On average, adolescents' perceptions of the quality of the parent-child relationship declined consistently and moderately between age 11 and age 14. Conflict with parents increased, whereas all aspects of warmth decreased; changes were significantly greater for girls than boys. Variances increased with age, primarily because of increases in the magnitude of genetic effects. Heritability estimates ranged from .09 to .31 at intake and .35 to .45 at follow-up and tended to be higher for boys than girls. Changes in the parent-child relationship are interpreted as reflecting genotype-environment correlation processes whereby adolescents increasingly influence their relationships with their parents.
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