The purpose of this paper is to suggest a brief but psychometrically sound measure of the relationship between resident parents, both fathers and mothers, and their adolescent children. Reflecting our interest in outcomes for, and from the perspective of, children, we use a measure that is reported by the adolescent. Analyses in this paper examine the psychometric properties of the resident parent-adolescent relationship scale employed in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth – 1997, and elucidate the apparent effects of the resident parent-adolescent relationship on the subsequent activities and behaviors of the teens. First, we consider evidence from the existing literature on the importance of this construct.