A series of studies examined the impact of family type on the well-being of adolescents. The studies involved a national sample of adolescents (ages 12-18) living in the four most prevalent family structures in the United States: intact, first-married family units; divorced, single-parent families; stepfamilies; and continuously single-parent families. Several features of families were explored, such as levels of parental support, conflict between parents, and parent-adolescent conflict that may account for differences in adolescent well-being across family types. Findings indicate adolescents whose mothers and fathers are both in their first marriage have the fewest problems with academic performance and socioemotional adjustment, and adolescents whose mothers are divorced or remarried experience more problems than their counterparts in first-married families, although these differences tend to be small. Adolescents whose mothers have never married are generally at an intermediate level of adjustment. In addition, adolescents in divorced families and stepfamilies experienced the highest levels of mother-adolescent disagreement, the lowest levels of mother-adolescent interaction and maternal supervision, and the lowest levels of socioemotional and global well-being. Adolescents in divorced families had the lowest grade-point averages. Finally, the studies found that the differences in adolescent well-being within family types are greater than the differences across family types, suggesting that family processes are more important than family composition. 5 references.