It seems apparent that the quality and quantity of a child’s relationships have much to do with adjustment.  If situational stressors prevent a child from actualizing the most important social needs and strivings appropriate to his or her developmental level of maturity, then negative emotional effects would become more likely.  But simply describing the major social aspects of early adolescent development such as attachments and friendships does not necessarily bring us any closer to understanding the effects of long commutes on children.  Rather, it highlights the developmental context for the research data of the present study.

Family Life Cycle Changes and Developmental Vulnerability

If we view adolescent depression in a developmental and maturational context, then depression may be seen as a response to the stress of transitions and stages, both physiological and social.  Adolescent depression may be a consequence of unresolved struggles in the transition process of identity formation (Butman & Arp, 1990).  Part of identify formation may be seen as a bid for more independence from parental control on the part of the child.  Family Life-Cycle theory maintains that as children reach adolescence and begin to seek out more outside influence, the family system undergoes a strain.  Prior to adolescence, the parents have the greatest degree of influence on the children’s values and activities.  But as the young adolescent begins to differentiate from the family as a whole, all the relationships in the family undergo strain.  The stress of this transition is resolved as the family adjusts to the new reality of outside influence playing a greater role in the family system. If the family resists this transition, the stress for all family members is prolonged (Carter & McGoldrick, 1988).

            The significance of this may be simply that the home consequences of commuting stress spill over into a family system already under stress.  This stress may be due to the presence of an adolescent in the home and the developmental transitions in progress both in terms of the individual adolescent and the family life cycle.

Family Stressors, Social Development and Early Adolescence:  Possible Implications of Long Parent Commutes for Early Adolescent Development

How do the characteristics of adolescent social development described above shed light on the possible emotional effects of having parents who have long commutes to and from a full-time job?  We can look at this question from two perspectives.  First, as pre-adolescents begin to experience less dependence upon their parents, having less time with their parents due to lengthy commutes might be less likely to have a negative emotional impact as compared with the impact on a younger child.  This has a certain plausibility about it, particularly if we consider that the fulfillment of needs for friendship may provide a compensating resource by which a child copes with the absence of commuting parents.  For example, perhaps the pre-adolescent who must wait longer for her mother to return from work will tend to have a greater number of intimate interactions with a best friend over the phone.

            A second standpoint from which to address the question of the effects of commuting emphasizes the sheer volume of stressors characteristic of early adolescence. We have seen that there appear to be various dimensions of stress and strain for the early adolescent.  Numerous concurrent changes are occurring in family, educational, physiological, and social realms, as well as the interactions between these.  While it may be going too far to consider these changes traumatic, they certainly tax whatever positive coping resources exist for the child (whether internal or external).  Because of this, it appears consistent with the salient features of social development to predict that young adolescents of parents who have long commutes will tend to experience greater emotional distress than those children who have at least one parent available to them in late afternoon and early evening.