This article reports two exploratory studies testing a model guided by a social interactional perspective, positing an inverse relation between the quality of parent-child interactions and adolescent problem behaviors. It addresses mixed findings in the literature related to gender differences. Study 1 uses cross-sectional survey data from midwestern parents with either a boy (n = 377) or a girl (n = 335) between 11 and 13 years of age. Study 2 data, used to replicate the Study 1 results, are collected from a cross-sectional survey sample of midwestern parents with either a boy (n = 279) or a girl (n = 269) in the same age group. Multisample latent variable structural equation modeling confirms the hypothesized inverse relationships in both studies. Also, there are no significant young adolescent gender differences in these relationships. The consistency of findings from both studies is discussed with respect to results from earlier research.
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