Conflict between parents and adolescents seems inevitable. Explain what research says about this eventuality. Then, describe and evaluate qualities that will help a family lessen the conflict between parents and adolescents.
Many people believe that adolescents lose respect for their parents and feel less close to them than they did as children, these beliefs simply do not hold up. A temporary and modest increase in parent-child conflict is common at the onset of puberty and family cohesion decreases modestly during the adolescent years. Adolescents and their parents squabble more about relatively minor matters such as disobedience, homework, household chores, and access to privileges such as use of the car (Sigelman & Rider, 2006).
A study was conducted on problem-solving sessions between boys and their parents was observed every 2 years from age 9 to 18. Isabela Granic and her colleagues (2003) then coded positive, neutral, negative, and hostile statements or acts on the part of child and parent. They found that the amount of change from one type of behavior to another on the parent of parent and child increased from age 9-10 to age 13-14 and then decreased by age 17 or age 18. It was though parents and 13 and 14-year-olds were experimenting to figure out how to relate to each other now that the child has become a teenager. Conflict increased at this age, and adolescents became more active in initiating and controlling interaction. Before and after this period, each parent-child pair seemed to have a fairly stable style of interacting (Sigelman & Rider, 2006).
Renegotiating the Relationship
The parent-child relationship changes during adolescence, not so much in its degree of closeness as in the balance of power between parents and adolescents. Most theorists agree that a key developmental task of adolescence is to achieve autonomy, which is the capacity to make decisions independently and manage life tasks without being overly dependent on other people (Sigelman & Rider, 2006 p. 433). When most children reach puberty and become more physically and cognitively mature and more capable of acting automonomously, they assert themselves more. When this occur, parents tend to turn over more power and the parent-child relationship changes from one in which parents are dominant to one in which parents and their sons and daughters are on a more equal footing (Steinburg, 2002).