The coping strategies used by adolescents in intact and in separated families

Abstract

While for some young people family life is smooth sailing, for many others it is fraught with turbulence. In this study of secondary students in metropolitan Melbourne the major concerns of children in intact and separated families were compared. The study also compared how young people cope according to their family circumstances. The 238 young people who live in intact households reported fights with parents and happiness as their major concerns. The major concern of the 114 young people in separated households was lack of access to the non-residential parent.

The investigation utilised the Adolescent Coping Scale (Frydenberg & Lewis, 1993a), an 80-item instrument developed and validated over a five-year period as an instrument to measure adolescent coping. The results of the study indicated that there was a significant variation in coping according to gender and a significant relationship between coping and family status. There were significant gender differences regardless of whether the families were intact or separated.