Dyadic Parent-Adolescent Role Confusion Dimensions: Development and Validation of an Observational Coding Scale

When parents lack the psychological resources necessary to meet their own emotional and interpersonal needs, they may look to offspring to meet caregiving, social, or romantic needs, which may lead to deviation from typical parent-child roles. Subsequently, a child may attempt to fill this role to maintain significant caregiver attachment and engage in role confusion. Three dimensions of role confusion have been proposed: adolescent as parent, adolescent as peer, and adolescent as partner. Existing research demonstrates overall role confusion relates to offspring borderline features, however there is a lack of empirical understanding of how parent-adolescent role confusion dimensions relate to offspring outcomes, namely behavioral problems and borderline features (affective instability, identity disturbance, negative relationships, self-harm/impulsivity; Morey, 1991). There are no existing observational systems to assess all three dimensions among parent-adolescent dyads. Because offspring may internalize and transmit role-confused dynamics intergenerationally, it is important to investigate role confusion dimensions to inform family-based interventions to address problematic family relations. The current study validated a new observational coding scale (Dyadic Parent-Adolescent Role Confusion Scale, DPARCS) for assessing the three dimensions of dyadic parent-adolescent role confusion. We validated the DPARCS by establishing criterion and discriminant validity for overall role confusion and dimensions with known groups of maternal diagnostic status and known correlates of adolescent behavioral problems and borderline symptomatology. Specifically, adolescent as parent role confusion uniquely related to adolescent identity disturbance, and adolescent as peer role confusion to adolescent negative relationships. This scale validation provides empirical support for the importance of examining role confusion dimensions and offers implications for future research and treatment for role confusion, risk factors, and adolescent functioning.