1. “Tea time!”: Family rituals and their links to family functioning and youth wellbeing in New Zealand Carla Crespo, Jan Pryor and Paul Jose Roy McKenzie Centre for the Study of Families SASP-Wellington 2008

2. Family rituals: “windows” to the family - Rituals tell researcher what families “do” - Powerful organizer of behaviour within the family - Interaction between individual and family - level factors

3. -Family rituals are associated with positive outcomes for young people such as stronger adolescent identity, and less alcohol consumption for adolescents in at-risk households; they have also been negatively linked with mental health problems. Family rituals: Do they matter for young people? What would you change in your family? “I would change the way we eat. We pretty much eat junk food every night…” Boy (15 years old, Focus group)

4. Current study Examined the links between family’s investment in rituals and: a) Family perceptions (young people and parents’/caregivers’ reports) b) Young people’s outcomes such as bullying behaviour and externalization as a coping strategy (young people’s reports)

5. Measures -Family Ritual Questionnaire (Fiese and Kline, 1993) -Family Cohesion (Adapted from FACES II, Olson, Portner & Bell, 1992) -Family Monitoring and Supervision; Family Conflict (Adapted from Family Climate Inventory, Kurdek, Fine & Sinclair, 1995) -Family Identity (Generated for the study)

6. Measures - Work-life balance (One item generated for the study) -Coping strategy: Externalization (Adapted from Jose, D’Anna, Cafasso et al.) -Bullying in and outside school (One item each measuring the frequency of bullying in the past month)

7. Dinner time “Think about a typical dinner in your family” For our family really true sort of true AB Some families regularly eat dinner together For our family really true sort of true C D Other families rarely eat dinner together. BUT

8. Annual Celebrations “ Think of celebrations that your family has every year. Some examples would be birthdays, Christmas and anniversaries.” For our family really true sort of true AB For some families, celebrations are important and special For our family really true sort of true C D For some families, celebrations aren’t particularly important or special BUT

9. Sample 930 Young People Gender 50.9% Male 48.5% Female Age Mean: 12.91 SD= 1.73 930 Parents/Caregivers Relation to the child 84.3% Mothers 10.9% Fathers 4.8% Other Families 64.5% Intact 17.9% Lone parent 9.6% Step families 2.9% Extended

10. Hypotheses Stronger families’ investment in rituals will be linked to more positive perceptions of family by both young people and parents’ caregivers, namely: higher levels of: Family Cohesion Family Monitoring and Supervision Family Identity lower levels of Family conflict and a more positive perception of Family work-life balance

11. Hypotheses Stronger families’ investment in rituals will be associated with young people’s outcomes, namely: lower levels of Bullying and Externalization

12. Correlations Family rituals and other family dimensions * p<.05----- Parents/caregivers ** p <. 01----- Young people Family Cohesion Family Identity Family Monitoring and supervision Family Conflict Work/life balance Family Rituals (Parents/ caregivers’ reports).35**.19**.23**.08*.32**.23 ** -.18** -.14**.19**

13. Correlations Family rituals and young people’s outcomes * p<.05 ** p <. 01----- Young people Young people’s outcomes Bullying (school) Bullying outside school Externalization Family Rituals (Parents/ Caregivers’ reports) -.13 **-.08 *-.12**

14. Cohesion Monitoring/ Supervision Identity Conflict Model fit Chi-square: 1.52; p=.22; CFI=.99; RMSEA=.015 Work/life balance Family Rituals.28*.14* -.09*.07* SEM model predicting Family Rituals

15. Regression analyses: Predicting Bullying in school Family rituals Family Cohesion Age Gender Bullying (School) -.10** -.16**.08*.15** * p <.05----- Parents/caregivers ** p <. 01----- Young people

16. Regression analyses: Predicting Bullying outside school Family rituals Family Cohesion Age Gender Bullying (Outside School) -.08* -.03 -.02.11** * p<.05----- Parents/caregivers ** p <. 01----- Young people

17. Gender as a moderator in the link between Family rituals and Bullying outside school

18. Regression analyses: Predicting Externalization Family rituals Family Cohesion Age Gender Externalization -.08* -.20** -.02 -.05 * p <.05----- Parents/caregivers ** p <. 01----- Young people

19. Discussion - Stronger families’ investment in rituals is linked to more positive family perceptions reported by both parents/caregivers and young people -Stronger families’ investment in rituals is negatively linked to young people’s bullying behaviour and externalization

20. Conclusions The study of family rituals vs the study of more classic family dimensions Family rituals: Relevant for young people’s regulation of interpersonal behaviour? The assessment issue: The importance of young people’s independent perceptions of family rituals