Crisis in the Family and Positive Youth Development: The Role of Family Functioning

The family is a very important institution that provides relationships and contexts in which adolescents are included and where the trajectory of positive development can be activated. A family crisis can affect family functioning and endanger adolescent development. Therefore, we aimed to explore the association of crisis in the family with positive youth development (PYD), and further, whether adolescent-perceived family functioning mediates or moderates this relation. The sample consisted of Slovak adolescents (N = 341, 44% boys, mean age = 13.16) who completed questionnaires that included questions on family crisis and joint family activities, the Alabama parenting questionnaire and the Very Short PYD questionnaire in the baseline measurement of the Care4Youth cohort study. We found a positive association of perceived positive parenting (B = 0.51; p < 0.001) and family activities (B = 0.50; p < 0.001) with PYD, whereas crisis in the family (B = -0.42; p = 0.01) and perceived poor supervision (B = -0.30; p < 0.001) were negatively associated with PYD. Using serial mediation model, we found following pathway which connected crisis in the family with PYD: crisis in the family → perceived poor parental supervision → joint family activities → PYD. This implies that family interventions and counselling to support parenting skills, especially parental supervision and family activities, to those with the signs of an ongoing family crisis may help to counteract the negative effect of the family crisis on PYD.