Literature – Adolescent Development
Preparation exam 2
Adolescence – Chapter 4: Families
Self-fulfilling prophecy: The idea that individuals’ behavior is influenced by others’
expectations for them – an expectation that is realized because we act in ways that make it
happen. Like when parents expect their child to be difficult when they become adolescents.
Family problems are no more likely to occur during adolescence than at other time sin the life
span.
Is Conflict Between Teenagers and Parents Inevitable?
The Generation Gap: Fact and Fiction
Teenagers and their parents usually have surprisingly similar beliefs about such things as the
importance of hard work, educational and occupational ambitions, and the personal attributes
that they think are important and desirable. This is because parents and adolescents share a
common socioeconomic, regional, and cultural background, and these are the main factors
that shape our central beliefs.
Although there isn’t much of a gap between the generations when it comes to basic values,
there is often one between teenagers and adults in matters of personal taste, most clearly
evident in styles of dress, preferences in music, and leisure activities. Unlike basic values,
which develop gradually over time and are shaped from an early age, preferences and tastes
for things like clothing, music, and recreational pursuits are far more likely to change with
fads and fashions. Adolescents are more likely to be influenced by their friends than by their
parents in these matters, and as a consequence, parents and teenagers often disagree about
them. because adolescents spend a great deal of time with their friends, teenagers’ preferences
are likely to be shaped to a large measure by forces outside the family. This also means that
the size of the generation gap will fluctuate from one historical epoch to the next. Moreover,
in a study the patterns of change were similar across the countries studied, even though they
varied in their economic, political, and cultural climates.
What Do Adolescents and Parents Usually Fight About?
The major sources of disagreement in families with teenagers for as long as scientists have
been studying it are curfews, leisure time activities, clothing, and the cleanliness of
bedrooms. And, although conflict between adolescents and parents over these mundane
matters is generally less frequent in ethnic minority than in White families, the topics of
disagreement are similar across ethnic groups and cultures. A major contributor to adolescent-
parent bickering is the fact that teenagers and their parents define issues of contention very
differently. Parents view many issues as matters of right and wrong – not necessarily in a
moral sense, but as matters of custom or convention. Adolescents, in contrast, are likely to
define these same issues as matters of personal choice.
Rebels With a Cause:
Contrary to stereotype, though, adolescents rarely rebel against their parents just for the sake
of rebelling. Rather than resisting all of their parents’ attempts to make and enforce rules,
,adolescents distinguish between rules they think their parents have a right to make and rules
that they think are out of bounds. Of course, there are differences among adolescents in the
extent to which they believe their parents have the authority to regulate various sorts of
decisions, and adolescents who see their parents as having more legitimate authority have
fewer behavior problems.
Conflict between parents and children increases during early adolescence. One reason for this
is that adolescents come to see more and more issues that they previously saw as legitimate
for their parents to regulate as matters of personal choice. When parents attempt to regulate
what adolescents believe are personal issues, teens are likely to describe their parents as being
overly controlling. How parents get their information also matters. In other words, teenagers
and their parents often clash more over the definition of the issue (e.g., whether something is a
matter of safety rather than a matter of personal choice) than over specific details. The
struggle, then, is over who has the authority – and whose jurisdiction the issue falls into.
Because early adolescence is a time when adolescents’ reasoning abilities are changing, the
way they understand the family rules and regulations change as well.
Adolescents’ expectation for secrecy are much greater than parents’. there is an increase, with
age, in adolescents’ willingness to lie to their parents, especially about matters the adolescent
thinks are personal.
Family Relationships at Adolescence
Although it is incorrect to characterize adolescence as a time of high conflict in most families,
it is important to keep in mind that adolescence is nevertheless a period of change and
reorganization in family relationships and daily interactions.
A Time of Reorganization and Change
When families enter a new stage in their child’s development, it takes them a while to figure
out how best to deal with it. With time, they usually reach a comfortable place, a sort of
equilibrium.
Family system theory: A perspective on family functioning that emphasizes interconnections
among different family relationships (such as marital, parent-child, sibling)
According to family systems theory, relationships in families change most dramatically
during times when individual family members or the family’s circumstances are changing,
because it is during these times that the family’s equilibrium is often upset, like adolescence.
The specific concerns and issues characteristic of families at adolescence arise not just
because of the changing needs and concerns of the young person but also because of changes
in the adolescent’s parents and in the needs and functions of the family.
The Adolescent’s Parents at Midlife
Midlife crisis: A psychological crisis over identity believed to occur between the ages of 35
and 45, the age range of most adolescents’ parents.
Midlife Meets Adolescence:
The developmental concerns of parents and adolescence are complementary. Consider the
issue of biological change. At same time that adolescents are entering into a period of rapid
,physical growth, sexual maturation, and, ultimately, the period of the life span that society has
labeled one of the most physically attractive, their parents are beginning to feel increased
concern about their own bodies, about their physical attractiveness, and about their sexual
appeal.
A second overlap of crises concerns perceptions of time and the future. At the same time that
adolescents are developing the capability to think systematically about the future and do, in
fact, start looking ahead, their parents are beginning to feel that possibilities for changing their
own lives are limited. One reason for this shift may be that at midlife adults are reminded of
their mortality because they see their own parents aging.
Finally, consider the issue of power, status, and entrance into the roles of adulthood.
Adolescence is the time when individuals are on the threshold of gaining a great deal of
status. Their careers and marriages lie ahead of them, and choices may seem limitless. For
their parents, many choices have already been made – some successfully, others perhaps less
so. Most adults reach their “occupational plateau” – the point at which they can tell how
successful they are likely to be – during midlife, and many must deal with whatever gap exists
between their early aspirations and their actual achievements.
In sum, for adolescents, this phase in the family life cycle is a time of boundless horizons; for
their parents, it means coming to terms with choices made when they were younger.
This overlap of crises is likely to have an impact on the family relationships. The adolescent’s
desire for independence appears to be especially stressful for parents.
The Mental Health of Parents:
In families with middle-aged adults, adjusting to adolescence may take more of a toll on the
mental health of parents than their adolescents. This period is often seen as the most difficult
stage of parenting, is the low point in parents’ marital and life satisfaction. Parents who are
deeply involved in work outside the home or who have an especially happy marriage may be
buffered against some of these negative consequences, however, whereas single mothers may
be especially vulnerable to them. At the same time, studies show that parents’ mental health
problems negatively affect the way they interact with their adolescents, which in turn
adversely affects adolescents.
Parents’ mental health is worse when their teenage children are living at home than it is once
they have moved out, and when children leave home, it is fathers, not mothers, who typically
feel the greatest sense of loss.
Changes in Family Needs and Functions
The family as a unit changes as well in its economic circumstances, its relationship to other
social institutions, and its functions.
Family finances are often strained during adolescence. The financial demands placed on
parents in the “sandwich generation” (that is, sandwiched between their adolescent children
and their aging parents) require considerable adjustment.
The adolescent’s family also must cope with the increasing importance of the peer group.
Special Concerns of Immigrant Families
, How adolescents and parents adjust to this shift in orientation varies across ethnic groups.
Many immigrant families place an high value on familism. Adolescents who value familism
and assist their families are more likely to develop prosocial values, less likely get depressed
and less likely to get involved with antisocial peer groups, which lessens their chances of
drinking or using illicit drugs.
Familism: An orientation toward life in which the needs of one’s family take precedence over
the needs of the individual.
Immigrant parents’ ideas about family responsibilities sometime clash with the more
individualistic orientation characteristic of many mainstream American families. Different
expectations between immigrant parents and teenagers are a significant source of stress for
adolescents and parents, especially when the adolescent has adopted values and expectations
of the new country and the parents are less so, something known as generational dissonance.
Generational dissonance: Divergence of views between adolescents and parents that is
common in families of immigrant parents and American-born adolescents.
Transformations in Family Relations
Together, the biological, cognitive, and social transitions of adolescence; the changes
experienced by adults at midlife; and the changes undergone by the family during this stage
set in motion a series of transformations in family relationships. Early adolescence – when
this shift toward more egalitarian relationships first begins – is frequently a challenging time.
Changes in the Balance of Power:
During early adolescence young people begin to try to play a more forceful role in the family,
but parents may not yet acknowledge adolescents’ input. By middle adolescence, however,
teenagers act and treated much more like adults. They have more influence over family
decisions, but they do not need to assert their opinions through interruptions and similarly
immature behavior (like they do in early adolescence). As adolescents begin to feel more
independent, their relationships with their parents improve.
To adapt to the changes triggered by the child’s entrance into adolescence, family members
must have some shared sense of what they are experiencing and how they are changing. Yet
parents and teenagers often live in “separate realities,” perceiving their day-to-day
experiences in very different ways – this may be because young adolescents may be
especially sensitive to the emotional signals given off by others.
The Role of Puberty:
The adolescent’s biological and cognitive maturation likely plays a role in unbalancing the
family system during early adolescence. Family relationships change during puberty, with
adolescents and their parents bickering more frequently and feeling less close. Although
puberty seems to distance adolescents from their parents, it is not associated with familial
“storm and stress”. Rates of outright conflict between parents and children are not
dramatically higher during adolescence than before or after. The distancing that takes place
between parents and teenagers in early and middle adolescence is temporary. Parent-child
relationships tend to become less conflicted and more intimate during late adolescence and
