ABSTRACT
The family arena in general, and relationships with parents in particular, have traditionally been regarded as a central context of development for adolescents, affecting their personality, academic achievements, and coping and adaptation (Bronfenbrenner, 1979). Specifically, close and warm relationships with parents and moderately demanding and supervising parenting were found to be associated with positive outcomes, including aspects such as self-esteem, social competence, and coping and adjustment to stressful events (see Steinberg, 1990, for a review). The overwhelming majority of the studies on parent-adolescent relationships employed self-report questionnaires, which assessed dyadic relationships in isolation (e.g. father-adolescent relationships), and were mostly administered only to the adolescent. In other cases a more general approach, looking at the family rather than at dyadic relationships in isolation, was adopted, by measurement of parenting styles (e.g. Dornbusch et al., 1987; Baumrind, 1989, 1991; Steinberg et al., 1989), or assessing the general atmosphere of the family (Moos, 1984). Other studies observed the family from a systems theory angle, measuring general aspects such as cohesion and adaptability of the family as a whole (e.g. Noller and Callan, 1986; Olson, 1986).
