Relationship provisions, self-efficacy and youth well-being in military families Jay A. Mancini a , Gary L. Bowen b , Catherine Walker O'Neal a, ⁎, Amy Laura Arnold a a Human Development and Family Science, The University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602, USA b Social Work, The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA abstract article info Available online 8 April 2015 Keywords: Relationship provisions Military youth Social organization theory of action and change Youth developmental and psychological outcomes Anchored in the social organization theory of action and change (Mancini & Bowen, 2013), this empirical analysis of military youth examines relationship provisions as related to youth outcomes of anxiety, depressive symp- toms, personal well-being, and academic performance. Data were collected from parents and their adolescents, ages 11–18, living in the continental United States (N = 273 military families). Findings from this analysis of military youth indicated that the relationship provisions available to youth were implicated in more positive youth outcomes, and self-efficacy served as a mechanism linking relationship provisions to anxiety and school performance but not to depression and personal well-being. Policy and practice implications are provided, including the importance of establishing and sustaining youth programs and community initiatives that build on natural, informal networks. © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Military operations in Afghanistan (Operation Enduring Freedom) and Iraq (Operation Iraqi Freedom, Operation New Dawn) in the after- math of September 11, 2001 have placed unparalleled demands and challenges on military families and the children and youth who live in these families. Lengthy and multiple wartime deployments for service members, in combination with deployments related to national and in- ternational relief missions, have placed enormous stress on America's military and created long periods of parental absence from the home for service members with children, with many two-parent families es- sentially functioning as one-parent households. Spouses and children have not been immune to these consequences, including experiences of secondary trauma (Dekel & Monson, 2010). The mortality and mor- bidity from war cast a long shadow onto the lives of service member families (Huebner, Mancini, Bowen, & Orthner, 2009). The potential magnitude of the presenting situation is reflected in part by the number of families serving in the shadows of war. More than two-in-five DOD active-duty members have children; a similar proportion (43.3%) of reserve component members have children (DOD (Department of Defense), 2013). Although a greater proportion of these children are five and under (42.6% for the active component and 28.8% for the reserve components), approximately one in four of these children is between the age of 12 to 18 (22.4% for the active com- ponent and 29.6% for the reserve components; (DOD (Department of Defense), 2013). The modal family structure in the active-duty military includes a military service member with a civilian spouse; however, the military also includes dual-military marriages with children and single military members with children. In these cases, children and youth may have both parents or their only parent deployed or facing the de- mands of military service. It is sobering to note that in our sample of youth in military families (hereafter, military youth), none were more than seven years old when these wars in the aftermath of 9/11 began, and, for many of them, they began life at the same time the United States entered these conflicts. Transition and change are accurate descriptions of what military members and their families experience on a regular basis, which may take the form of deployment, member and family moves from one in- stallation to another (permanent change of station moves), separation due to short-term training obligations of a military member (TDY), or even unaccompanied tours of duty in which the military member is not necessarily in a war zone but nevertheless separated from his/her family. National Guard and Reserve military members and their families experience many of the same transitions and challenges plus the added dimension of usually living remotely from military installations and are often therefore less-connected with military resources and other mili- tary families (Huebner, Mancini, Wilcox, Grass, & Grass, 2007; Kudler & Porter, 2013). We contend that in the face of family transition and change, social life becomes a significant protective factor for military family members, especially for youth in those military families (Bowen & Martin, 2011). Moreover, we contend that, in particular, in- terpersonal relationships are closely connected with supporting impor- tant individual qualities that youth possess, and in turn those qualities of youth, in this case self-efficacy, have profound implications for core youth outcomes (Easterbrooks, Ginsburg, & Lerner, 2013). Our question is, what do relationships provide to youth; that is, how do these rela- tionships function in their lives? Then, how are these relationship Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology 40 (2015) 17–25 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail address: cwalker1@uga.edu (C.W. O'Neal). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.appdev.2015.02.003 0193-3973/© 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. 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