Project Description:
Parent-child relationship quality, or the emotional bond between parents and children, including warmth and connectedness, is one modifiable factor that theory suggests is important to vocational success in the general population. Career Construction Theory highlights the importance of the parent-child relationship in a child's sense of security, mental health, and self-determination, shaping their pre-vocational skills and later vocational trajectories. The parent-child relationship may be even more critical for autistic individuals, who rely heavily on their parents for support across the lifespan. In addition to theory, there is some preliminary evidence that the parent-child relationship is, indeed, important to vocational outcomes in this group. For example, in one study, parent warmth had a medium-large effect size on employment stability among autistic youth. The transition to adulthood is a crucial turning point that sets the stage for outcomes throughout adulthood and is thus an ideal time for investigations that might inform when and how to intervene. Positive parent-child relationships in childhood are associated with decreased problem behaviors in autistic samples, but research has yet to examine how parent-child relationships in childhood and adolescence impact autistic individual's pre-vocational skills and activities. This knowledge gap, combined with calls from the autism community for more research on vocational outcomes, suggests a critical need to investigate mechanisms that lead to better pre-vocational skills and activities for autistic individuals. We will leverage two existing longitudinal datasets involving autistic youth to understand the impact of parent-child relationship quality on pre-vocational skills and activities during the transition out of high school. Our central hypothesis is that parent-child relationship quality in childhood and adolescence will predict pre-vocational skills and activities, mediated by self-determination and mental health.
