Strength in families: Parental resilience, marital dynamics, and adolescent anxiety and substance use

Drawing on Luthar’s relational framework of resilience, this study examines how parental resilience operates within marital dynamics to shape adolescent adjustment in Mexican-origin families. Using four waves of data from 604 families (M adolage = 12.41, SD = 0.97; 54.3% girls), we tested a longitudinal cascade linking W1 parental resilience to W4 adolescent anxiety and substance use via W2 marital warmth, W3 marital satisfaction, and W3 adolescents’ perceptions of interparental conflict. Actor-partner interdependence models revealed both intrapersonal and interpersonal pathways: wives’ resilience predicted own marital warmth, whereas husbands’ resilience predicted wives’ warmth. Indirect effects indicated that wives’ resilience was associated with lower adolescent anxiety and substance use through warmer marital interactions, higher marital satisfaction, and reduced perceived conflict. These findings position resilience as a promotive relational resource enacted within the marital dyad, advancing interparental positivity spillover theory by identifying parental resilience as upstream drivers of family processes that shape adolescent psychopathology.