Attachment to parents, social competence, and emotional well-being: A comparison of Black and White late adolescents.

The model tested in this study proposed that the association of parental attachment bonds to emotional adjustment would be mediated by social competence. Relational variables were expected to be more important in the development of social competence and emotional adjustment for Black students than for White students; there were no directional hypotheses for gender differences. Single-group analyses and multiple-group comparisons revealed that the model fit the data reasonably well for a large sample (N = 630) of Black and White late adolescents. Gender of parent differences emerged, in which attachment to father generally was a more important predictor of social competence than was attachment to mother. In all analyses, social competence was a significant predictor of emotional adjustment. There were no significant differences between groups in comparisons of the relative strengths of construct interrelations.