Unfortunately, beyond adolescence there is a lack of prospective research examining the precursors of hostility in adult social relationships (Patterson, 1998). Hostility appears unlikely to arise de novo in young adulthood (Blieszner & Adams, 1992; Hartup & Stevens, 1997); rather, an organizational–developmental perspective suggests that the precursors of young adult hostility would be most likely to appear in difficulties in central tasks of social development in earlier eras, such as negotiating family relationships (Cicchetti & Schneider–Rosen, 1986; Sroufe & Jacobvitz, 1989). Although problematic family interactions have been implicated in peer relationship difficulties in late childhood and early adolescence (Brown, Mounts, Lamborn, & Steinberg, 1993; Dishion, 1990), virtually no studies have examined whether difficulties in family interactions predict problems in peer functioning well beyond adolescence.

This paper focuses on difficulties attaining a primary goal of social development during adolescence—establishing autonomy while maintaining a sense of relatedness with parents—as a potential predictor of later hostility in young adulthood. The effort to establish relationships characterized by both autonomy and relatedness is now recognized as a central challenge in the development of healthy relationships from adolescence into adulthood (Allen, Hauser, Bell, & O’Connor, 1994; Baxter, 1994; Steinberg, 1990), and how this task is handled appears linked to outcomes ranging from self-esteem and ego development to depression and delinquency (Allen, Hauser, Bell, & O’Connor, 1994; Allen, Hauser, Eickholt, Bell, & O’Connor, 1994). Because establishing autonomy while maintaining relationships with parents plays such a central role in adolescent development, problems in handling adolescent autonomy negotiations appear likely to predict the development of young adult hostility through several distinct developmental mechanisms, as outlined below.

First, adolescents may establish patterns of relationship-undermining, hostile behavior in interactions with their parents around autonomy negotiations that they then replicate in new relationships as they grow older. Although no prospective research has assessed the extent to which hostility in adolescent–family interactions generalizes and persists into adult close relationships, other related research has demonstrated somewhat similar homotypic continuities in patterns of hostile and aggressive behavior over time and in undercontrolled behavior from childhood into late adolescence (Capaldi & Clark, 1998; Newman, Caspi, Moffitt, & Silva, 1997). Several lines of research have demonstrated continuities in various forms of hostility and aggression outside of the family from adolescence into young adulthood (Eron & Huesmann, 1990; Pulkkinen, 1996). This study first addresses the basic question: Does hostility observed in the context of autonomy negotiations with parents in adolescence serve as a predictor of hostility in new relationships a decade later in young adulthood?

Second, parents’ own hostility in response to adolescent autonomy strivings also appears likely to predict teens’ developing hostility in interactions by young adulthood. This will occur if parental hostility over time leads the adolescent to expect (albeit erroneously) hostility from others and to act aggressively toward them as a result (Dodge & Somberg, 1987). In addition, parental hostility displayed toward a teen in response to a primary developmental striving of the teen may reflect a broader pattern of poor parenting practices that undermines the parent–teen relationship and negatively alters the course of development leading to later difficulties in social interactions (Allen, Hauser, O’Connor, Bell, & Eickholt, 1996; Capaldi & Clark, 1998). This study will consider parental predictors of young adult hostility and the extent to which these predictors explain additional variance in young adult outcomes over and above that explained by teen hostility.

Third, theories of adolescent autonomy development suggest that later hostility would also be fostered by parents’ direct threats to adolescents’ autonomy strivings, even if hostility was not present initially (Allen, Moore, & Kuperminc, 1997). By blocking strong, developmentally important autonomy strivings, parents may lead their adolescents to try to establish their autonomy not via relationship-maintaining discussions but by seeking to escape from the autonomy-undermining relationship by using hostile behaviors. Over time, these patterns of handling autonomy threats with hostile behavior may become internalized and generalized to new relationships. This pattern of undermined adolescent autonomy leading to hostile behavior has now been observed in prospective research on adolescents’ developing hostility within the family (Allen, Hauser, O’Connor, et al., 1996). Autonomy-undermining behavior within dyadic parent–adolescent interactions at age 14 years, coded from observed family discussions of disagreements, has been found to predict adolescents’ increasing hostility with parents over the subsequent 2-year period. Allen, Hauser, O’Connor, and colleagues (1996) propose that adolescents who are experiencing great difficulty in establishing autonomy with their parents in direct negotiations ultimately use hostility toward parents to figuratively blast themselves out of autonomy-undermining relationships. This “blasting out” hypothesis may help explain the finding that autonomy-undermining behavior within the family is an even better predictor of later hostility than are assessments of adolescents’ initial levels of hostility. The question to be addressed by this study is whether the “blasting out” process generalizes and extends to relationships outside of the family and beyond adolescence.

Assessing adolescent autonomy vis-à-vis parents requires recognizing that parents are themselves distinct and autonomous individuals and that relationships with mothers may well differ from relationships with fathers. Although fathers are typically neglected in research on adolescent–parent interactions, in part because they are far more difficult to recruit for observational studies, a wealth of evidence suggests that interactions with fathers are likely to be particularly important to functioning during and beyond adolescence (Amato, 1998; Booth & Crouter, 1998; Phares, 1992; Phares & Compas, 1992). Recent evidence suggests that fathers may have a particularly important role to play with respect to autonomy processes and social development. Research to date suggests clear links to fathers’ behaviors and adolescents externalizing and aggressive behaviors (Bjoerkqvist & Oesterman, 1992; Phares & Compas, 1992) and to later career and academic achievement (Bell et al., 1996). One explanation of findings with adolescents is that fathers may play a particularly important role in launching adolescents into the social world beyond the family and that autonomy negotiation processes between adolescents and their fathers may be an integral component of this launching process (Bell et al., 1996). The current study uses observational data to independently consider the roles of adolescents’ interactions with both mothers and fathers in predicting later hostility.

A multiple pathways perspective on developmental psychopathology (Sroufe, 1997) also suggests the possibility that continuities between autonomy processes in adolescence and hostility in adult relationships are likely to be altered in the presence of serious adolescent psychopathology. For adolescents who are already struggling with serious psychopathology, it seems possible that the insult of further struggles to establish autonomy or maintain a sense of relatedness vis-à-vis parents would be particularly likely to alter developmental trajectories so as to lead to future difficulties (Sroufe, 1997). Such adolescents might be most vulnerable to give up on efforts to control hostile impulses in relationships as a result of a build up of frustration in dealing with hostile or autonomy-undermining parents along with the effects of serious psychopathology.

To date, no observational research has examined the longitudinal continuities between adolescent–family interactions and hostile behavior with peers in young adulthood. This study utilized longitudinal, multireporter, multi-method data to examine the relation between autonomy struggles in adolescent–family interactions observed at age 16 years and later hostility as rated by close peers a decade later in young adulthood (age 25 years). To consider autonomy and relatedness across different levels of functioning in adolescence, both a highschool sample and a sample of adolescents that had been previously psychiatrically hospitalized at age 14 years were examined, with covariance and interaction tests employed as appropriate to consider both the mediating and moderating effects of serious adolescent-era psychopathology on the continuities observed. This study followed Patterson’s (1998) suggestion and first examined simple homotypic continuities in adolescent displays of hostility over time, followed by examination of other potential precursors of later hostility, followed by analyses of whether these additional precursors add to our understanding over and above observed homotypic continuities. Specifically, we examined (a) whether homotypic continuity would be observed between hostility in relationships with parents in adolescence and with close friends 10 years later in young adulthood, (b) whether parental hostility in interactions with their adolescents would predict adolescents’ later hostility as rated by close friends in young adulthood, (c) whether the previously seen effect of autonomy-undermining behavior leading to increased hostility over time—the “blasting out” effect—would cross the boundaries from family to peer interactions and from adolescence to young adulthood, and (d) whether observed predictions were specific to young adult hostility or might simply reflect more general levels of psychosocial functioning (assessed as peer-rated ego resiliency, Block, 1978).

The finding of substantial correlations between adolescents’ hostility within their families at age 16 years and hostility as rated by close peers at age 25 years provides solid evidence that the precursors of patterns of hostility in social interactions in young adulthood could be observed in family interactions during midadolescence. This continuity suggests that robust patterns of hostile interaction in close relationships may be established by mid-adolescence and persist well beyond this era. Other researchers have also found sizeable correlations in hostile behavior across this part of the life span in areas such as aggression and antisocial behavior (Eron & Huesmann, 1990; Pulkkinen, 1996). This study was one of the first to assess the continuity of such behavior in social interactions using observational and independent rater data.

This study also found heterotypic continuity in fathers’ hostile behaviors predicting the later hostility of their young adult offspring. One explanation for this heterotypic continuity is that fathers’ hostile behavior toward adolescents leads them to expect hostility from others well into the future, even where it may not exist, and to act aggressively in “response” (Dodge & Somberg, 1987). Alternatively, fathers’ hostility may have represented longstanding, enduring patterns of hostile interaction with their adolescents and to some extent may have been a reaction to the adolescent’s own hostile behavior in interactions. A third possibility is that patterns of hostile interaction may have been genetically transmitted. This possibility seems less consistent with the current data, however, both because maternal hostility toward adolescents’ was not predictive of later adolescent hostility and, more importantly, because parents’ hostility toward one another in marital interactions (i.e., as adults in peerlike relationships—the closest analogy to what we observed in young adulthood) was not related to adolescents’ peer-rated hostility as young adults.

It is important to note that the hostility observed during adolescence occurred in a particular context—handling a disagreement in which the adolescent’s cognitive autonomy was being negotiated. Thus, the hostility that was observed occurred in response to a challenge to the adolescent’s autonomy and can be seen as reflecting a fundamental difficulty negotiating autonomy without undermining the relationship with parents. As such, hostility within this context may have been more meaningful, and hence more predictive of future difficulties, than hostility occurring in other aspects of the adolescent–parent relationship. This suggests the importance of autonomy processes in adolescence, but it also suggests that the results of this study should not be taken as generalizing to show that all signs of adolescent hostility with parents are necessarily predictive of future social difficulties.

The strongest and most striking finding in this study was the degree of continuity between fathers’ autonomy-undermining behavior and later hostility on the part of their young adult offspring. Notably, this behavior was not simply correlated with later hostility but predicted the development of young adult hostility (e.g., predicting future levels of this hostility even after taking into account concurrent levels in adolescence). This finding suggests that fathers were adding an important element to observed interactions over and above what adolescents were contributing. This finding was expected based on prior research and theory (Allen, Hauser, O’Connor, et al., 1996; Allen, Moore, & Kuperminc, 1997) but was nevertheless striking in its magnitude. After accounting for gender and prior psychiatric history, this effect alone accounted for 25% of the variance in young adult hostility. Even after further accounting for adolescents’ and parents’ hostility in interactions at age 16 years, fathers’ autonomy-undermining behavior accounted for an additional 13% of the remaining variance in young adult hostility—a figure that may underrepresent the true effect size given attenuation due to unreliability in assessing fathers’ autonomy-undermining behavior and to use of untrained lay reporters to assess young adult hostility. Further, predictions from fathers’ autonomy-undermining behaviors existed over and above predictions of a general measure of ego resiliency as rated by peers. This indicates a degree of specificity to these predictions—they were tapping not simply general levels of social functioning but rather a process that appeared more tightly linked to patterns of hostile social interaction.

Although this nonexperimental study cannot demonstrate the presence of causal relations, these effect sizes are consistent with the hypothesis that interference with appropriate adolescent autonomy strivings presents a powerful potential threat to social development well into the future. If further research supports the idea that such a causal chain exists, how might it work? It has been previously suggested that autonomy-undermining behavior may teach the adolescent that close relationships will not be flexible enough to permit autonomy to be attained via direct discussions (Allen, Hauser, O’Connor, et al., 1996). If adolescents learn from interactions with parents that autonomy is easily threatened and unlikely to be attained without use of hostile, distancing behavior, then over time they may come to perceive that autonomy in other close relationships is also most likely to be attained by literally or emotionally escaping from the relationship (Steinberg, 1990). Given that autonomy needs continue to arise in adult relationships (Baxter, 1994), hostility in young adulthood may reflect a learned approach to creating distance in relationships when normal autonomy needs arise. This may occur either because the adolescent has come to expect autonomy to be undermined in new relationships and uses hostile behavior to reflexively preempt these imagined threats or because the adolescent has simply not had the opportunity to learn to use reasoned, discussion-based approaches to handling autonomy concerns. Although this study does not prove the existence of causal mechanisms such as these, our findings clearly suggest the need for further research exploring these and other possible explanations for these striking continuities. Whatever the explanation for these continuities, this study emphasizes that family interaction patterns in adolescence may have very important implications for social functioning well beyond the end of adolescence and outside of the family.

One intriguing aspect of these findings was that predictions were made primarily from relationships with fathers but not mothers (with the one exception that adolescents’ own displays of hostility toward both parents were predictive of later hostility). Given that post hoc analyses did not find significant differences between predictions from fathers versus mothers, these findings should be taken only as showing that fathers appear quite important in predicting later hostility and not as showing that mothers are necessarily unimportant (or even less important) in this regard. The importance of fathers is being increasingly recognized in research on adolescent social development (Phares, 1992; Phares & Compas, 1992). In particular, fathers may play a role in mediating the transition into adultlike activities and relationships beyond the home—a transition in which autonomy negotiations are likely to play a central part. More generally, Freitag, Belsky, Grossmann, Grossmann, and Scheuerer–Englisch (1996) note that fathers may play a particularly important role in giving their offspring opportunities to explore issues of autonomy and relatedness throughout childhood. It may be that this role becomes even more important as the autonomy strivings of adolescence emerge.

In adolescence, fathers may partly serve to represent the larger social world beyond the family. When fathers undermine adolescents’ autonomy strivings, these autonomy-undermining behaviors may be particularly problematic as they may set up a pattern of the adolescent expecting to need to use hostility to “blast out” of potentially autonomy-threatening social interactions in the world beyond the family. This pattern is quite analogous to the finding from prior research that adolescents’ who are struggling with autonomy at age 14 years with either parent become more hostile in their families over the following 2 years (Allen, Hauser, O’Connor, et al., 1994). In further support of this explanation is the finding from this sample that paternal behavior undermining of adolescent autonomy is also predictive of lower levels of academic achievement during and beyond adolescence (Bell, Allen, Hauser, & O’Connor, 1996). Adolescents who have experienced paternal undermining of their autonomy clearly struggle not just with friends but in school as well, as development proceeds. No Gender of Adolescent × Gender of Parent interactions were observed, indicating that fathers’ behaviors did not predict significantly different outcomes for male and female adolescents.

Notably, there was only a very marginal effect of severe adolescent-era psychopathology in predicting young adult hostility, and psychopathology did appear to alter appreciably the patterns of continuities observed between adolescent–family interactions and young adult hostility. This finding is in keeping with reports of long-term studies that have shown that the sequelae of adolescent psychiatric hospitalization on functional outcomes tend to be highly selective and focused in young adulthood (Allen, Hauser, & Borman–Spurrell, 1996). It further suggests that hostility in young adult close relationships is not predicted simply by the presence of prior psychopathology in adolescence but rather by focal interactions that disrupt or block the normative the process of establishing autonomy in the context of positive parental relationships.