Abstract

This study investigates if a divorce affects the attitudes and trust between parents and adolescents. Participants were 986 adolescents and their parents, taken from a Swedish longitudinal study, the “10 to 18” study. This study used 28 measures of parent-adolescent relationships, which created three areas: warmth, closeness and conflicts between parents and adolescents. The adolescents were divided into three groups, and one-way ANOVAs were made to test differences. The results showed that a divorce affects the father adolescent relationship more than the mother-adolescent relationship. They also showed that the attitudes and the trust between parents and adolescents were affected by a divorce.