Two Years In: What Long-Term Mentoring Really Does

Fallavollita, W. L., & Lyons, M. D. (2026). Two years and counting: The dynamics of long-term youth mentoring and association with parent and peer relationships. American Journal of Community Psychology, 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajcp.70073

Introduction

The shortage of mental health professionals, combined with a growing youth mental health crisis, has positioned mentoring as one of the more promising low-cost interventions available. Fallavollita and Lyons (2026) take that premise a step further, asking whether long-term mentoring relationships strengthen young people’s relationships with their parents and peers. Ecological theory has suggested that relationships within a young person’s social network influence one another, but longitudinal evidence for these spillover effects has been limited.

Methods

This is a secondary analysis of data from 1,368 youth (mean age 11.5; 59% female; 46% White, 30% Black, 16% Hispanic, 8% multiracial) enrolled in school and community-based mentoring programs across a Midwestern state between 2014 and 2018. All participants completed at least two years with the same mentor. Mentoring relationship strength, parental trust, and peer social acceptance were measured at three time points. Random-intercept cross-lagged panel models (RI-CLPM) separated within-person from between-person variability to isolate genuine developmental change.

Results

While mentoring relationships strengthened over time, the evidence did not support the idea that a stronger mentoring bond translated into better relationships with parents or peers over the two-year period. The evidence did prove, however, that the mentoring relationship itself deepened meaningfully, especially in the second year. While mentoring may not automatically fix other relationships in a young person’s life, the mentoring bond itself tends to grow, which is a success worth recognition.

Discussion

The absence of reciprocal effects challenges assumptions embedded in Rhodes’s developmental model. The authors argue that mentoring relationships may function as an “end unto themselves”—valuable for supporting well-being without necessarily reshaping other relational domains. There’s also a significant counterintuitive finding: negative experiences within mentoring relationships compounded over time. Mentees who reported more negative feelings than expected at one point were likely to report even more at the next. Thus, long-term matches are not automatically better matches—they’re just longer, and whatever is happening within them, good or bad, tends to deepen.

Implications for Mentoring Programs

Whether mentoring improves a kid’s relationship with their parents or peers may be beyond the scope of positive mentoring effects. The mentoring bond itself is worth treating as a real outcome worth celebrating. Strong mentoring bonds are fostered with ongoing support for mentors, thoughtful matching, and enough check-ins to catch a struggling relationship before it compounds into something harder to fix.

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