Parenting and Peer Relationships: Reinvigorating Research on FamilyPeer Linkages in Adolescence

Drawing energy from a debate about the efficacy of parental monitoring, research over the first decade of the 21st century has traced numerous ways in which parenting practices and parent – child relationship features affect adolescents’ peer interactions, and how these 2 factors interact to affect adolescent adjustment. In reviewing this research, this paper extols methodological advances and growing diversity of samples while critiquing conceptual underpinnings of many investigations. Suggestions are offered to guide research toward a more contextually sensitive, integrative understanding of dynamic, reciprocal processes between general and peer-focused parenting processes and adolescent peer relations.