Susan M McHale

Pennsylvania State University | Penn State · Department of Human Development and Family Studies

Study goals were to assess: (1) the development of academic interests from middle childhood through late adolescence, (2) the degree to which junior high and high school transitions, parents' educational expectations, interests, and education, were related to changes in academic interests, and (3) the longitudinal links between youth's academic int...

Sibling relational aggression is an understudied social and family process that is of developmental significance in adolescence, a period of interpersonal relationship development. This study examined developmental change in sibling relational aggression across adolescence and used multilevel actor–partner independence models to test its longitudin...

This study expanded on research examining families’ roles in youth gender development that has investigated boys’ versus girls’ family experiences by using a within-family design to study the gender socialization of brothers versus sisters from the same families. We drew from archival data collected in 2001–2002 from an ethnic homogeneous sample of...

Sibling relationships are most individuals’ longest lasting relationships, but their development remains understudied. Using a within-family, accelerated longitudinal design with data from mothers, fathers, and two siblings from 201 predominately White, working-, and middle-class families, we charted the development of sibling intimacy and conflict...

Parents’ management of their children’s sibling relationships, or sibling-focused parenting, has substantial theoretical and practical importance but is rarely studied. This study’s goals were to describe dimensions of sibling-focused parenting and to examine sociocultural resources and challenges as potential correlates among Latinx mothers and fa...

Firstborn children have higher prevalence of obesity than secondborn siblings. The birth of a sibling typically results in resource dilution when mothers begin to divide their time and attention between two children. This mixed-methods analysis applies the family systems process of resource dilution to test the hypothesis that characteristics of th...

Toward illuminating the family ecology of gender development, we focus on the parent-child, interparental, and sibling subsystems, examining their influences on youth gender development across childhood and adolescence. We discuss structural factors, such as sibling and couple sex constellation, but focus primarily on family members’ roles as inter...

Across adolescence and into young adulthood, as youth experience both normative developmental and stressful life changes, close and supportive relationships are essential for healthy adjustment. Supportive relationships may be especially important for protecting Mexican-origin youth from developing depressive symptoms and engaging in risky behavior...

Background Firstborn children have higher rates of obesity compared to secondborns, perhaps due, in part, to differential feeding practices. Despite the centrality of siblings in family life and potential for influence, almost nothing is known about the role of siblings in parent feeding practices in early childhood. Methods Participants ( n = 117...

This study examined daily links between sibling warmth and negativity and positive and negative mood in middle childhood and the moderating role of enculturation. Participants were 326 Latinx children from 163 families in the United States (Mage = 10.63 and 8.58 years for older and younger siblings, 48.5% female, 89.3% Mexican‐origin). Children rep...

Objective and Background Sibling relationship qualities have been linked to parents' marital dynamics, but we know little about the contextual conditions underlying these linkages. We examined longitudinal associations between parents' reports of their marital satisfaction and conflict and siblings' reports of warmth and conflict and tested whether...

Background Firstborn children are more likely to have obesity than secondborns, which may partially be explained by differential use of food to soothe (FTS) infant distress, which has been inked to higher weight status. Objectives To test associations between the birth order and maternal FTS and whether differences in sibling temperament and body...

Sibling relationships have unique implications for youth well-being and adjustment, leading researchers to examine factors, such as sibling sex, that explain variation in sibling dynamics. This study was designed to unpack biological sex to examine girls’ and boys’ gender-typed personality qualities to determine whether they accounted for differenc...

This book examines the similarities in children’s short- and long-term development and adjustment when they have been separated from their parents because of larger institutional forces. It addresses the unique circumstances and the similarities faced by parents and children under three different institutional contexts of separation: parental migra...

Weight concerns are prevalent among Black adolescents and have negative ramifications for well‐being. We examined racial identity and racial socialization as potential sociocultural resources that might mitigate the development of weight concerns among Black adolescents, and we evaluated gender differences in these links. Participants were 132 Blac...

This study aimed to illuminate the implications of COVID-19 school closures for sibling dynamics among Latinx school-age children in the U.S. and to examine family and cultural factors that may have conditioned school closure effects. Data came from an ongoing study of Latinx families in Arizona that collected home visit and survey data prepandemic...

Objective This study aimed to illuminate developmental changes and gender differences in the link between weight concerns and cigarette use across adolescence. Specifically, we examined whether and how the strength of the association between weight concerns and cigarette use changed across adolescence, and whether patterns of association differed b...

Objective: To illuminate family implications of youth’s work, we examined longitudinal links between the work experiences of Mexican-origin youth in late adolescence and young adulthood and father-youth relationships. Method: Using data from 187 Mexican-origin youth and their employed fathers, we tested youth’s (52.4% female; Mage = 19.64, SD = 1.7...

Studies from diverse cultures report mixed results in the relationship between birth order and risk for obesity. Explanations may thus lie in the postnatal period when growth is shaped by the family environment, including parental feeding practices, which may be affected by siblings. Consistent with a family systems perspective, we describe two pro...

Parent-youth intimacy protects adolescents from adjustment problems, including weight concerns, low self-esteem, and depressive symptoms. This study aimed to identify when in development parent-youth intimacy emerges as a protective factor, how this protective effect changes in its strength across adolescence, and whether there are differences in i...

An increasing body of work documents the roles of religion and spirituality in Black American marriages. We built on this research to examine religious coping as a potential cultural resource for Black marriages using a dyadic analytic approach with longitudinal data. Specifically, we investigated the effects of positive (i.e., sense of spiritual c...

Very little is known about sibling influences on child adjustment in non-Western communities. Therefore, this multi-informant study examined the longitudinal associations of sibling warmth and conflict with peer and academic adjustment and tested birth order and gender as moderators among Chinese families from Hong Kong, China. On two occasions sep...

Grounded in a family systems perspective, we used a dyadic approach to examine longitudinal associations between parents’ marital relationship qualities (marital conflict and marital satisfaction) and parent–child warmth and conflict in a sample of 180 African American families with adolescent-age children. We also tested whether these associations...

Ethnic-racial identity (ERI) formation is an important developmental task. Although families are a primary context for ERI socialization, little is known about siblings' role. Accordingly, we applied the Actor-Partner Interdependence Model to longitudinal data from 2 siblings to examine the links between siblings' ERI exploration, resolution, and a...

Research based on Western communities indicates that parents' differential treatment may be linked to their children's psychological and behavioral problems. Very little is known, however, about the potential implications of parental differential treatment for child socioemotional competencies or in non-Western communities. Focusing on families fro...

This study aimed to illuminate the implications of adolescents' relationships with mothers and fathers for their career development processes and, in turn, their occupational attainment in young adulthood across a 10-12-year period. Grounded in the career construction theory, which highlights adolescence as a significant period of preparation for c...

Grounded in theory and research on the role of adolescent family experiences in young adult educational attainment, this study took the novel step of synthesizing results from prior studies and using a machine learning (ML) approach to address three questions: (1) By incorporating adolescent family experience factors examined across prior studies i...

Finding ways to protect youth from maladjustment during adolescence and young adulthood is important, and youth of Mexican descent are key targets for such efforts given that they experience higher rates of depressive symptoms, risky behaviors, and sexual risk behaviors compared to youth from other ethnic/racial groups. Using a sample of younger (M...

To advance understanding of parents' and adolescents' unique and shared perspectives of familism, a core cultural value in Mexican-origin families, our study addressed 2 goals. First, we identified family members' unique and shared perspectives of familism values using multitrait-multimethod confirmatory factor analysis (Kenny & Kashy, 1992). Secon...

Objectives Parents’ and youth’s personality qualities are associated with parent-child relationships. Given that gender shapes the organization and structure of family life, gender typed personality qualities may also have implications for relationships between parents and children. We examined longitudinal linkages between expressivity, a gender t...

This book examines the implications of rural residence for adolescents and families in the United States, addressing both the developmental and mental health difficulties they face. Special attention is given to the unique circumstances of minority families residing in rural areas and how these families navigate challenges as well as their sources...

Introduction Adolescents' sibling relationships may serve as a training ground for couple relationships given their similar features, including companionship, closeness and role structure. This study used a dyadic approach to examine sibling intimacy and control in adolescence as predictors of young adults' couple relationship orientations (attachm...

The majority of adults in the U.S. are overweight or obese, and yet Western ideals of beauty include low body fat composition as a component of physical attractiveness. In turn, perceived discrepancies between actual and ideal body shape and weight mean that many adults experience weight concerns—and they also may be dissatisfied with their spouse’...

Introduction Advancing understanding of human health promotion and disease prevention and treatment often requires teamwork. To evaluate academic medical institutions’ support for team science in the context of researchers’ career development, we measured the value placed on team science and specificity of guidance provided for documenting team sci...

Associations between depressive symptoms and relationship distress are well-established, but little is known about these linkages among Black couples, or about the role of sociocultural factors in these processes. In this study, we applied a dyadic analytic approach, Actor-Partner Interdependence Modeling (APIM), to address 2 goals: to assess the p...

Parents’ differential treatment (PDT) and their children’s appraisals of its fairness have been linked to adjustment across childhood and adolescence, primarily in Anglo American families. We extend this literature by studying Mexican-origin siblings’ appraisals of PDT fairness and jealousy toward siblings and their longitudinal links with emerging...

Objective Parents' comments about their adolescents' weight have been linked with adolescents' disordered eating, but we know little about the personal and contextual conditions that promote or mitigate the effects of parents' perceptions on adolescents' weight concerns. This study examined whether the prospective association between parents' perce...

Numerous studies document sex differences in African American girls’ and boys’ academic achievement and motivation, but little is known about how the enactment of gender, such as in the forms of gendered behaviors, attitudes, or personal-social qualities, is related to school functioning. To advance understanding of African American adolescents’ ac...

Objective: In the United States, underemployment is more common among ethnic minorities, especially African Americans. At the same time, African American couples are at higher risks of marital difficulties than other racial/ethnic groups. This study used a dyadic approach to examine implications of underemployment, as perceived by African American...

Supportive work-family environments are associated with lower levels of perceived work-to-family interference (WFI; Kelly et al., 2014), but we know little about the mechanisms underlying this linkage. Nor is much known about the larger family contexts within which these processes take place, including crossover effects of spouses' work on one anot...

Academic resilience reflects individuals’ high levels of achievement and motivation despite the presence of stressful conditions that place them at risk for reduced performance. To understand what informs resilience, this study used narrative data from 274 Mexican-origin late adolescents/young adults (aged 19-25 years) to understand how a sociohist...

Sibling relational aggression is an important but understudied dimension of sibling relationships that has potential implications for adolescents’ adjustment. This study examined the longitudinal associations between being the target of sibling relational aggression and adolescent adjustment (i.e., depressive symptoms, risky behavior, self-worth, a...

Parents compare their children to one another; those comparisons may have implications for the way mothers and fathers treat their children, as well as their children’s behavior. Data were collected annually for three years with parents, firstborns, and secondborns from 385 families (Time 1 age: firstborns, 15.71, SD = 1.07, 52% female; secondborns...

Family is an important context for cultural development, but little is known about the contributions of siblings. This study investigated whether older siblings’ cultural orientations and familism values predicted changes in younger siblings’ cultural orientations and familism values across 2 years and tested sibling characteristics and younger sib...

Weight concerns are common among adolescents and are associated with a range of negative psychological and physical health outcomes. Self-esteem is one correlate of weight concerns, yet prospective research has not yet documented the direction of this association over the course of adolescence or whether this association differs by gender. This stu...

A key question in understanding gender development concerns the origins of sex segregation. Children’s tendencies to interact with same-sex others have been hypothesized to result from gender identity and cognitions, behavioral compatibility, and personal characteristics. We examined whether prenatal androgen exposure was related to time spent with...

Most research on the developmental correlates of gendered vocational aspirations and attainment utilizes cross-sectional designs and begins in adolescence or later. This study used longitudinal data collected from U.S. youth from age 11 to 26 to: (1) chart their gendered vocational development, that is, the gender typicality of vocational aspiratio...

To illuminate how within‐family differences in achievement may emerge, this study examined sibling experiences in middle childhood as predictors of sibling differences in college graduation. First‐ and second‐borns from 152 families reported on their experiences with siblings and parents at ages 11.80 (SD = 0.56) and 9.22 (SD = 0.90), respectively,...

This study assessed associations between both work demands (pressure, hours) and work resources (self-direction) and marital satisfaction in a sample of 164 African American dual-earner couples who were interviewed annually across 3 years. Grounded in the work–home resources and family systems frameworks, results from longitudinal actor–partner int...

The world of work remains gender-segregated, and research is needed to identify factors that may give rise to women's and men's vocational choices. This study explored bidirectional relations between youth's gendered career aspirations and the proportions of youth's leisure time spent in stereotypically gendered activities and gendered social conte...

Workplace interventions may change how employed parents experience family and personal time. This study examined the day-to-day linkages between time resources (assessed by time use and perceived time adequacy for parenting, partner, and personal roles) and daily well-being and tested whether a workplace intervention enhanced the linkages. Particip...

A model for academic institution support for community-engaged research - Dennis P. Scanlon, Laura J. Wolf, Cynthia H. Chuang, Jennifer L. Kraschnewski, Eugene J. Lengerich, Susan M. McHale, Ian M. Paul, Janice Penrod

Parents' differential treatment (PDT) is a common family dynamic that has been linked to youth development and well-being, including adjustment problems and poor sibling relationships. Much less is known, however, about the developmental course of PDT and the conditions under which parents treat their children differently in adolescence and young a...

OBJECTIVES/SPECIFIC AIMS: Community engagement is a commonly used term, but is complex in both meaning and application. In order to help academic institutions and administrators develop infrastructure to promote and support community engagement and to help investigators work productively with communities, this analysis discusses the major component...

A family systems perspective directs attention to the potentially different experiences and perspectives of family members. This study examined parents' differential treatment (PDT) of siblings, discrepancies between parent and youth reports of PDT, and their links with relationships between adolescents and their mothers and fathers across three ye...

Perceived ethnic discrimination is central to the experiences of Latino young adults, yet we know little about the ways in which and the conditions under which ethnic discrimination relates to Latino young adults’ sleep patterns. Using a sample of 246 Mexican-origin young adults (M age = 21.11, SD = 1.54; 50 % female), the current study investigate...

Drawing upon the work-home resources model, this study examined the implications of mothers’ evening and weekend shifts for youths’ time with mother, alone, and hanging out with peers unsupervised, with attention to both the amount and day-to-day consistency of time use. Data came from 173 mothers who worked in the long-term care industry and their...

This study built on research on sibling influences to assess potential bidirectional effects of older and younger siblings’ risky behaviors on one another’s risky behaviors; our longitudinal design allowed us to test these effects when siblings were at about the same chronological age, at different points in time. We also tested whether the strengt...

This study investigated youth's modeling of and deidentification from parents in romantic relationships using two phases of data from adolescent siblings, mothers, and fathers in 246 Mexican-origin families. Each parent reported his and her marital satisfaction and conflict, and youth reported on parent–adolescent warmth and conflict at Time 1. You...

This study charted the development of gendered personality qualities, activity interests, and attitudes across adolescence (approximately ages 9-18) among 319 African-American youth from 166 families. The relations between daily time spent with father, mother, and male and female peers-the gendered contexts of youth's daily activities-and (changes...

Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) methods are increasingly used in social and health sciences, but the feasibility and best practices for using EMA with youth are not yet clear. We conducted a systematic review of studies that used self-report EMA methods with youth; the goal was to identify common approaches and challenges to implementation an...

Family experiences have been linked to youth's achievements in childhood and adolescence, but we know less about their long term implications for educational and occupational achievements in young adulthood. Grounded in social capital theory and ecological frameworks, this study tested whether mothers' and fathers' education and occupation attainme...

Drawing upon the Work-Home Resources model (ten Brummelhuis & Bakker, 2012), this study examined the links between work-family conflict and employed mothers’ profiles of time resources for work and parenting roles. Using a person-centered latent profile approach, we identified three profiles of time use and perceived time adequacy in a sample of mo...

This research examined the longitudinal trajectories and family correlates of gender role attitudes in African American youth in a sample of 166 sibling pairs residing with their mothers and fathers. Multilevel modelling revealed that (1) girls and boys exhibited significant declines in gender attitude traditionality from ages 9 to 15 that levelled...

This unique volume advances the literature on sleep and health by illuminating the impacts of family dynamics on individuals’ quality and quantity of sleep. Its lifespan perspective extends across childhood, adolescence, adulthood and older age considering both phenomena of individual development and family system dynamics, particularly parent-chil...

Sleep can serve as both cause and consequence of individuals' everyday experiences. We built upon prior studies of the correlates of sleep, which have relied primarily on cross-sectional data, to examine the antecedents and consequences of sleep using a daily diary design. Specifically, we assessed the temporal sequence between nightly sleep and da...

Purpose: To investigate the prospective associations between Mexican-origin mothers' and fathers' traditional cultural values and young adults' health and dental care utilization and to test the moderating role of youth gender. Methods: Mexican-origin parents and youth (N = 246 families) participated in home interviews and provided self-reports...

A critical step in capturing family processes is to incorporate the perspectives and experiences of multiple family members toward characterizing how families operate as systems. Although some research has examined differences between parents’ and youth’s family experiences, most studies have focused on European American families, and we know littl...

The frequency of positive parent–child interactions is associated with youth adjustment. Yet, little is known about daily parent–child interactions and how day-to-day consistency in positive parent–child interactions may be linked to youth well-being. Using a daily diary approach, this study added to this literature to investigate whether and how d...

A strong work ethic generally has positive implications for achievements in work and school settings, but we know little about how it develops. This study aimed to describe the intra-familial transmission of work ethic and the associations between work ethic and adjustment in African American youth. Mothers, fathers, and two adolescent siblings (M...

The developmental course, family correlates, and adjustment implications of youth housework participation from age 8-18 were examined. Mothers, fathers, and 2 siblings from 201 European American families provided questionnaire and/or daily diary data on 6 occasions across 7 years. Multilevel modeling within an accelerated longitudinal design reveal...

Key questions for developmentalists concern the origins of gender attitudes and their implications for behavior. We examined whether prenatal androgen exposure was related to gender attitudes, and whether and how the links between attitudes and gendered activity interest and participation were mediated by gender identity and moderated by hormones....

Parent–adolescent conflict is frequent in families and has implications for youth adjustment and family relationships. Drawing on a family systems perspective, we examined mothers’, fathers’, and two adolescent-aged siblings’ (50.5 % females) reports of parent–adolescent conflict in 187 African American families. Using latent profile analysis in th...

Parents' differential treatment is a common family dynamic that has been linked to youth's well-being in childhood and adolescence in European American families. Much less is known, however, about this family process in other ethnic groups. The authors examined the longitudinal associations between parents' differential treatment (PDT) and both dep...

Youth’s perception of parents’ differential treatment (PDT) are associated with maladjustment during adolescence. Although the direct relations between PDT and youth’s maladjustment have been well established, the mechanisms underlying these associations remain unclear. We addressed this gap by examining whether sibling jealousy accounted for the l...

Objective: This study examined youth stressor reactivity in the form of links between daily stressors and adolescents' negative affect, physical health symptoms, and cortisol patterns. We also tested whether youth gender and parental warmth moderated these linkages. Method: Participants were the children of employees in the information technolog...

Youth's experiences with romantic relationships during adolescence and young adulthood have far reaching implications for future relationships, health, and well-being; yet, although scholars have examined potential peer and parent influences, we know little about the role of siblings in youth's romantic relationships. Accordingly, this study examin...

Using a randomized, intent-to-treat design, this pilot study examined the feasibility and short-term effects of Siblings Are Special (SIBS) with a sample of 54 low-income Latino families (91% Mexican-origin). Participants were older (M = 10.8 years; SD = .46) and younger siblings (M = 8.4 years; SD = 1.13), and their parents (94% biological mothers...

Using a group-randomized field experimental design, this study tested whether a workplace intervention-designed to reduce work-family conflict-buffered against potential age-related decreases in the affective well-being of employees' children. Daily diary data were collected from 9- to 17-year-old children of parents working in an information techn...

A burgeoning research literature investigates the sibling relationships of youth with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and their implications for individual adjustment. Focusing on four relationship domains-behaviors, emotions, cognitions and involvement-and toward advancing this generally atheoretical literature, we review and apply tenets from a ra...