Differences in perception of family functioning among fathers, mothers, and adolescent children

The study of divergences in the perception of the family life between each member of the family is an area of great interest regarding the family developmental changes and the level of family competence. Divergences between family members are specially relevant during adolescence, as adolescence is the stage when children try to clarify their own identity and parents are concerned with adequate ways to appropiately resolve conflicts associated to this stage. The present research assessed the degree of divergence between fathers, mothers and sons/daughters perception in a sample of 185 families of the Valencian Community (Spain). We applied the questionnaire FYD with two factors: Functionality and Family difficulties. Analyses of variance showed significant differences regarding relationship; post hoc comparisons indicated that there were not significant differences between the parents, but there were are differences between mother-son and father-son dyads where parents perceive higher values than children in Family competence and lower values than their sons/daughter in Family difficulties.