“Tea time!”: Family rituals and their links to family functioning

and youth wellbeing in New Zealand

Carla Crespo, Jan Pryor and Paul Jose

Roy McKenzie Centre for the Study of Families

SASP-Wellington 2008

Family rituals: “windows” to the family

- Rituals tell researcher what families “do”

- Powerful organizer of behaviour within the family

- Interaction between individual and family - level factors

-Family rituals are associated with positive outcomes for young people such as stronger adolescent identity, and less alcohol consumption for adolescents in at-risk households; they have also been negatively linked with mental health problems.

Family rituals: Do they matter for young people?

What would you change in your family? “I would change the way we eat. We pretty much eat junk food every night…”

Boy (15 years old, Focus group)

Current study

Examined the links between family’s investment in rituals and:a) Family perceptions (young people and parents’/caregivers’ reports)b) Young people’s outcomes such as bullying behaviour and externalization as a coping strategy (young people’s reports)

Measures

-Family Ritual Questionnaire (Fiese and Kline, 1993)

-Family Cohesion (Adapted from FACES II, Olson, Portner & Bell, 1992)

-Family Monitoring and Supervision; Family Conflict (Adapted from Family Climate Inventory, Kurdek, Fine & Sinclair, 1995)

-Family Identity (Generated for the study)

Measures

-Work-life balance

(One item generated for the study)

-Coping strategy: Externalization(Adapted from Jose, D’Anna, Cafasso et al.)

-Bullying in and outside school (One item each measuring the frequency of bullying in the past month)

Dinner time“Think about a typical dinner in your

family”

For our familyreally true sort of true

A B

Some families regularly eat dinner together

For our family really true sort

of true

C D

Other families rarely eat dinner together.

BUT

Annual Celebrations“Think of celebrations that your family has every

year. Some examples would be birthdays, Christmas and anniversaries.”

For our familyreally true sort of true

A B

For some families , celebrations are important and special

For our family really true sort

of true

C D

For some families, celebrations aren’t

particularly important orspecial

BUT

Sample

930 Young People

Gender 50.9% Male 48.5% Female

Age Mean: 12.91 SD= 1.73

930 Parents/Caregivers

Relation to the child 84.3% Mothers 10.9% Fathers 4.8% Other

Families 64.5% Intact 17.9% Lone parent 9.6% Step families 2.9% Extended

Hypotheses

Stronger families’ investment in rituals will be linked to more positive perceptions of family by both young people and parents’ caregivers, namely:

higher levels of:Family CohesionFamily Monitoring and SupervisionFamily Identity

lower levels ofFamily conflict

and a more positive perception of Family work-life balance

Hypotheses

Stronger families’ investment in rituals will be associated with young people’s outcomes, namely:

lower levels of Bullying and Externalization

Correlations

Family rituals and other family dimensions

* p< .05 ----- Parents/caregivers** p <. 01 ----- Young people

Family Cohesio

n

Family Identity

Family Monitorin

g and supervisi

on

FamilyConflict

Work/life balance

FamilyRituals (Parents/caregiver

s’ reports)

.35**

.19**

.23**

.08*

.32**

.23 **

-.18**

-.14**

.19**

Correlations

Family rituals and young people’s outcomes

* p< .05** p <. 01 ----- Young people

Young people’s outcomes

Bullying(school)

Bullying outside school

Externalization

FamilyRituals (Parents/

Caregivers’ reports)

-.13 ** -.08 * -.12**

Cohesion

Monitoring/ Supervision

Identity

Conflict

Model fitChi-square: 1.52; p= .22; CFI= .99; RMSEA= .015

Work/life balance

Family Rituals

.28*

.14*

-.09*

.07*

SEM model predicting Family Rituals

Regression analyses: Predicting Bullying in school

Family rituals

Family Cohesion

Age

Gender

Bullying

(School)

-.10**-.16**.08*

.15**

* p < .05 ----- Parents/caregivers** p < . 01 ----- Young people

Regression analyses: Predicting Bullying outside school

Family rituals

Family Cohesion

Age

Gender

Bullying

(Outside School)

-.08*

-.03

-.02

.11**

* p< .05 ----- Parents/caregivers** p <. 01 ----- Young people

0.95

1

1.05

1.1

1.15

1.2

1.25

1.3

1.35

low med high

Family rituals

Bul

lyin

g ou

tsid

e sc

hool

Gender Boys Girls

Gender as a moderator in the link between Family rituals and Bullying outside school

Regression analyses: Predicting Externalization

Family rituals

Family Cohesion

Age

Gender

Externalization

-.08*

-.20**

-.02

-.05

* p < .05 ----- Parents/caregivers** p < . 01 ----- Young people

Discussion

- Stronger families’ investment in rituals is linked to more positive family perceptions reported by both parents/caregivers and young people

-Stronger families’ investment in rituals is negatively linked to young people’s bullying behaviour and externalization

Conclusions

The study of family rituals vs the study of more classic family dimensions

Family rituals: Relevant for young people’s regulation of interpersonal behaviour?

The assessment issue: The importance of young people’s independent perceptions of family rituals