Adjudicated Mexican American Adolescents: The Effects of Familial Emotional Support on Self-Esteem,Emotional Well-Being,and Delinquency

This article examines relationships between familial emotional support, self-esteem, emotional well-being, and delinquency in 58 adjudicated Mexican American adolescents who were on probationary status with the juvenile justice system. Results indicated that maternal emotional support was negatively correlated with delinquency, and positively correlated with emotional well-being. In addition, regression analyses revealed that familial emotional support significantly predicted delinquency and emotional well-being, with maternal emotional support accounting for most of the total variance. Unlike previous findings in the general delinquency research, familial emotional support was unrelated to self-esteem. These results offer several insights into the nature and effects of Mexican American familial emotional support on an adolescent's behavioral and emotional adjustment.     

Beyond relationship reciprocity: A consideration of varied forms of children's relationships

The present research extends the use of a new scheme for classifying children's peer relationships that (a) jointly evaluates friendship and antipathy nominations and (b) includes nonreciprocated friend and antipathy nominations. Findings revealed that 12.1% of all classroom dyads (total dyads = 2,313) were unbalanced relationships, in which one child perceived a friendship but was disliked by the other child. Furthermore, having high frequencies of “befriending but disliked” relationships was associated with poor social competence and having high frequencies of “disliking but befriended” relationships was associated with good social competence. Results support the use of this new classification scheme by highlighting the common nature of unbalanced relationships and by establishing the association of unbalanced relationships to peer social competence outcomes.