3 Transactional processes between support and depressive symptoms 79 (Coyne, 1976; Rudolph, 2009). To study both short-term and long-term precedents and consequences of adolescent depressive symptoms, we analyzed several datasets with varying measurement intervals, in which adolescents reported on perceived parental support and their depressive symptoms. More specifically, at a short timescale, such as a momentary or daily timescale, we expect that parents adapt their behavior to current emotional needs of their adolescent. Accordingly, parents might provide temporarily more support when their adolescent experiences elevated depressive symptoms. According to Gottman’s emotion coaching meta-emotion philosophy (1996), a child’s display of more negative emotions may be an opportunity for parents to offer more comfort and guidance to help them cope with these negative feelings or help solve underlying problems. In line with this, an observational study showed that parents were more likely to bend a negative parent-adolescent interaction into a positive interaction than reciprocating their adolescent’s negativity (Van Bommel et al., 2019). Therefore, at a short timescale (e.g., hours, days), within families, we expect that parents increase their support after their adolescent showed more depressive feelings, and this increase in parental support is expected to be followed by a decline in the depressive feelings of the adolescent. At a longer timescale, relationship erosion processes might occur, in which parents respond to the elevated adolescent depressive symptoms by providing less parental support (Branje et al., 2010; Coyne, 1976). Interpersonal theories of depression (Coyne, 1976; Hammen, 2006; Rudolph, 2009) highlight that depressed persons are likely to gradually evoke more rejection from others by the accumulation of their frequent aversive interpersonal behaviors, such as excessive reassurance seeking, failure to accept support from others, social disengagement, and irritable behavior. Adolescents’ increased depressive symptoms might thus impact their relationships and gradually provoke more negative parent-adolescent interactions over time. Indeed, studies have shown that higher levels of depressive symptoms in adolescents are associated with less supportive and more conflictual parent-adolescent interactions (Bodner et al., 2018; Sheeber et al., 2007). Hence, the quality of the parent-adolescent relationship might slowly erode, including decreasing parental support, through the accumulation of negative interactions and lack of positive interactions. The perception that they receive less parental support than before may be followed with an increase in their depressive symptoms, evoking a maladaptive cycle between decreasing parental support and increasing adolescent depressive symptoms within families in the long term.
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