Family ritual behavior examined in the context of parenting styles and the prediction of adolescent psychosocial adjustment

Abstract

Family rituals are a rich area of family life which appear to provide a protective buffer for children in divorced of alcoholic families. Clinical lore also maintains that family rituals are beneficial to use in family therapy as they promote healthy family functioning. Family ritual behavior, however has not been systematically investigated in non-clinical families or in conjunction with other functional family variables. it is therefore not clear whether rituals are the process through which families function adoptively or are they just a marker of healthy family functioning. In an attempt to answer this question, family rituals were examined in conjunction with parenting styles, a well established family variable. Subjects were 427 eighth and eleventh grade students. Subjects completed paper and pencil measures regarding family ritual behavior, parenting styles, internalizing and externalizing problem behaviors, global self-worth, and social performance. Parenting styles were classified into four distinct styles, (i.e., authoritative, authoritarian, indulgent, and neglectful), as well as an ordinal measure of authoritativeness, (authoritative, somewhat authoritative, and non-authoritative). Hypotheses were partially supported depending on the way parenting styles were classified. A number of interesting findings were made regarding the relationship between family ritual behavior and parenting styles. Authoritative families were found to practice more total ritual behavior and their rituals were found to be more meaningful than in indulgent or neglectful families (four group classification), and than in somewhat authoritative and non-authoritative families (ordinal measure classification). Family ritual behavior did not predict adolescent adjustment, in terms of internalizing, externalizing, global self-worth, and social performance scores, above and beyond parenting style when parenting styles were classified into the four distinct groups. Family ritual behavior did however, predict adolescent internalizing, externalizing, and global self-worth scores beyond parenting style when the ordinal measure of authoritativeness was used in the analysis. The implications and possible reasons for these findings are discussed in terms of their impact on the use of family rituals in clinical practice.